


Consider the Thorns

by Sorrel



Series: somewhere i have never travelled [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Bickering, Bickering as Flirting, F/M, Rule 63, obligatory Rivendell fic, stop pulling pigtails Thorin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 18:52:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11927088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: A little more than kith, a little less than kind.If there's one thing that Thorin and Bree know how to do, it's argue.Two cats can't share the same tree,as Old Took used to say, and indeed a wise soul might observe that they'd likely get a long a good sight better if they weren't so very much alike.  (And in particular, if they weren't both so terribly accustomed to getting their own way!)  An even wiser soul might further note that no one quarrels that much save for the joy of it, and anyway who better to take the hard edge of the king's temper than the equally sharp-tongued burglar?The wisest souls, of course, are the ones who know not to breathe a bloody word of this out loud, because then one of them mighthearyou.





	Consider the Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> This follows a couple weeks after [Songs You Know by Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11666871), though you don't need to read that to make sense of this. That's also the source of the title and the song in the header.
> 
> Edit: I only just realized how much Thorin and Bree's dynamic was influenced by [Lord of Scoundrels](http://www.lorettachase.com/lord-of-scoundrels/) by Loretta Chase, which is, to this day, probably still my top romance novel of all time. Honestly, this explains a lot.

_Blackberry bush in the middle of the meadow_  
_Best to find some other fruit instead, oh!_  
_The fruit may look sweet and inviting_  
_But the brambles be sharp and biting!_

_You must consider the thorns, my lad_  
_Consider the thorns_  
_For the fruit may be sweet_  
_But the thorns can't be beat_  
_You must be careful, quick and clever_  
_If those blades you are to sever!_  
_So please, my lad, consider the thorns._

-Shire drinking song

###### 

He knows where they are the second they break free of the rock—has known, in truth, since the orc fell to their feet pierced with an elven arrow. Knowing and seeing are two very different things, however, and as Thorin digs the butt of his axe into the ground and looks out over the valley, he can feel the beginnings of fury burning like an ember beneath his ribs.

Beside him, their burglar lets out a breath of a sigh that could be anything from wonderment to exhaustion. "Is this… what I think it is?”

“The Valley of Imladris,” Gandalf intones, hiding a smile behind his beard. “The last Homely House east of the sea. In the Common tongue, it’s known by another name.”

“ _Rivendell_ ,” Thorin snarls, and turns on the wizard. “This was your plan all along, to seek refuge with our enemy!”

“You have no enemies here, Thorin Oakenshield,” Gandalf says, looking down at him along his nose—which is an expression Thorin particularly dislikes at the best of times, and has no patience to bear today. “In fact, the only ill-will to be found in this valley is that which you bring yourself.”

He doesn’t, Thorin notes bitterly, deny that this was his plan. Mahal save him from the trickery of wizards! “You think the elves will give our quest their blessing? They will try to stop us.”

And if they’re to go into their city, the elves will be many, and their company few. He’d put a dozen dwarrows at his back against an army of the beardless wood sprites, of course, but few among them were trained as soldiers. He exchanges a glance with Balin, and sees that his friend is thinking the same.

Gandalf sighs, leaning on his staff. “Of course they will,” he says. “They have enjoyed peace for many long centuries, and they have little reason to want it disturbed now.”

“Nice if you can get it,” Dwalin mutters behind him.

“But we do have questions that need answered,” Gandalf continues, ignoring the dwarven editorializing, “and there in Rivendell lies one of the few people in the world who can provide the answers.”

Gandalf's easy agreement throws him, but still he growls, "I do not like it."

"You don't have to," Gandalf says. "You simply need to, hmm, to take advantage of the situation. And if we are to be successful, this will need to handled with tact, and respect, and no small degree of charm." Gandalf looks down his nose, and Thorin thinks that of all of the times he's felt frustration or annoyance with the old bastard, this one, this one _surely_ takes the cake. "Which is why you will leave the talking to me."

Gandalf brushes past him in a swirl of gray fabric and sets off down the path, leaving Thorin to clench his hands around the handle of the axe and remind himself that calling insult on a wizard is worse than useless at the best of times, of which these most certainly do not qualify. After a moment, he puts the bit between the teeth of his temper once more, and turns to his company.

“Apparently,” he says, as evenly as he can manage, “we are going to Rivendell.”

There’s a general muttering of confusion and disbelief among the company, but it’s Balin who finally fixes him with his keen dark gaze and says, “Are you sure of this, laddie?”

_No,_ Thorin thinks. _This is a terrible idea, and but for the trickery of a wizard I would never put myself on their doorstep._ But angry as he is at the deception, he can yet recognize the wisdom of it. The orc pack on their heels almost certainly met their end by elvish steel, but orcs don’t hunt alone. There will be more of them, and if they were hunting for him, as they certainly seemed to be, then they’ll be guarding any roads through the Coldfells. Orc-kind are stupid, to be sure, but they’re canny hunters. Gandalf likely led them through the only path to safety—but Thorin doesn’t think it a coincidence, that they ended up the one place the wizard wanted them to go.

“Sure enough,” he says, and lets none of his doubts show on his face, lest they infect the party. “We won’t tarry long in these halls—a day, no longer. In the meantime, look sharp, keep your blades ready, and don’t let yourselves get separated if you can help it.”

Balin stares at him a moment longer, then sighs and sheathes his blade. “Aye, it will be done,” he says, and whistles sharp. “Down the mountain, lads! Tonight we dine with elves.”

Bifur takes the lead, as the most experienced mountaineer among them, and the others string out in a long line behind him, picking their way down the steep path with care. Thorin leans on his axe-shaft and waits for the rest of them to pass him, his gaze on their burglar, who’s still standing far too close to the edge of the rock and staring out at the valley below with, apparently, no notice of the departure taking place behind her.

“Are you planning to sleep up here, halfling?”

“What?” Bree says, clearly not listening. And then, “Oh, of course, I’ll be just a moment.”

He bites back a sigh. "Were you listening to a single word I said?"

She turns to give him a limpid look. "Generally not, but if you'd like to summarize, I'm all ears."

He opens his mouth.

" _Don't_ say it."

"I don't think I have to at this point, do I?"

"Yes, yes." She comes grumbling away from the ledge, walking-stick in hand. Somehow she held onto the blasted thing, during the long run across the plains—with her pack bumping on her back at every step and Gandalf’s blasted short-sword strapped too low on her hips, to boot. "You and every tween in Hobbiton, terribly original."

Her sour expression cheers him as always, and he sweeps into a mocking bow, arm extended toward the path. “After you, Mistress Baggins.”

Her pointy little nose ascends into the air. “Charmed, I’m sure."

The path verges on treacherous, loose with gravel and washed out from snowmelt—it’s obviously been some time since the valley’s masters have tended to it. He shakes his head at their lack of care. Are they so untouched by strife, these elves, that they can afford to forget the secret ways? Thorin can name three such paths out of the halls at Ered Luin, and all are checked regularly, to make sure the way is clear and steady if ever their people need to flee once more.

He hears a sigh, and looks back to see Bree gawping out over the valley again, and paying no attention to the path. “Watch your footing, hobbit,” he grunts, and earns a pinched-mouth glare for his trouble.

“My footing is fine,” she retorts, which is irritatingly true. If the various loose bits of pointy rock that _he_ can feel digging into his boot-soles bother her, she gives no sign, merely ambles downward as if she hasn’t a care in the world. One hand holds her walking-stick, poking curiously at the ground in front of her, and the other keeps straying to the straps of her pack, hitching it higher every time it threatens to slip (which is often).

He sighs to himself and promises to make her tighten the straps before they set out again. It hadn’t mattered so much when they had the ponies, but now...

“Do you find it so entrancing, then?” he asks, before he can think better of the question. “This city of elves?”

She looks at him like she finds him simple—which is an expression he wishes he didn’t find so familiar on her face. “Well, yes. Don’t you?”

He gives a wordless noise of disgust. “This sprawling contraption of wood and air? I’ve seen finer in the meanest dwarven settlement.”

She sniffs. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“Not for much longer, if this quest goes aright. You’ll see when we get to Erebor, burglar—these pretty wooden dwellings fare poorly indeed against halls of dwarven stone.”

She looks out again at the valley, her expression softening slightly. And then back to him, one brow raised haughtily. "Well, I think it looks very impressive."

He can’t help the snort of disdain that escapes him. "Aye, I suppose you would, coming from a hole in the ground."

She turns away from him with a huff, her narrow shoulders rigid under her too-big pack. "That _hole_ , as you say, is the finest in all the Shire, Master Oakenshield. My father dug it with his own two hands, and I’ll thank you not to speak ill of it."

There's something thin and brittle in her voice, far from her usual rich contempt at his poor manners, and he finds himself considerably less satisfied with her poor temper than usual. "And a very fine one it is, I'm sure," he says gruffly, and clears his throat. "Come. The others are getting ahead of us."

The path ends in a steep drop a few lengths before joining to the main road, and Thorin tugs the hood of her cloak to keep her from investigating too close to the crumbling edge. "It's taller than you are, hobbit," he sighs, when she responds to this bit of courtesy with an audible sniff, and jumps down before she can do more than glare, turning to offer his shoulder as brace so that she can do the same. "Here, like this."

There's an uncomfortably long pause, and then she takes hold of his shoulder in one hand and her walking-stick in the other, and clambers with passable grace down to join him. If her little dinner knife of a sword bangs into his ribs during the descent, or her slipping pack clouts him in the ear, well, he's suffered worse indignities.

She stumbles slightly as she lands next to him, and he puts a hand to her elbow before she can topple sideways. She steadies against him for a moment, child-light in his hands and blood-warm even through the layers of his armor, and blinks up at him. "...my thanks," she murmurs after a moment, and he drops her arm as if it's a hot coal, feeling something like a flush crawling up the back of his neck as he steps hastily away.

"Can't have you breaking your neck," he mutters gruffly, and she gives an impatient throaty noise in response.

"Honestly, you dwarves and your manners. Is it so very hard to say 'you're welcome?'" 

He glares at her, grateful for the distraction. "Think you the elves will show you greater?" 

"Well, they'd be hard-pressed to show themselves _worse_."

"Fine manners, aye, and pretty words," he growls. "They have plenty of both—but have a care with their smiles, for they've just as many teeth as any wolf."

"They seem pleasant enough in all the tales."

"Easily done when they've the writing of them," he points out, not without some bitterness. "In truth they're an isolated people, with no thought to the world beyond their borders and no care for the likes of you and me."

"Oddly enough," she murmurs, tilting up her chin in the particularly mild way he's learned to read as _danger,_ "I believe the last is often said of dwarves, as well."

If her aim was his temper, she could not have chosen her words with better care. He steps in close to her, using his greater size to crowd her back against the rock. "You’re so eager to make friends with elves? I wish you luck of it—but remember this, little burglar.” He leans down, ignoring the warning flash in her gray eyes, and murmurs directly looms into one ridiculous pointed ear, “The line of Durin has not found such fortune in elven halls in many an age, and you will be counted among our number.”

Her ear flicks from his breath against it, but her voice is steady as she murmurs back, “Lucky for you, I’ve always been rather good at making friends.”

###### 

They're relieved of their packs in the courtyard by a veritable horde of long-limbed servants, one of whom promises they will be left in the rooms, and then ushered away into the hall by the pinch-mouth steward. Thorin sees Bree look after their things with a considering eye, fingering the crusty sleeve of her jacket and clearly thinking longingly of the baths that await them, but he takes hold of her collar before she can get any clever ideas and tugs her along in his wake. She glares at him for it, of course, and yanks herself from his grasp—but neither does she argue further. He'll take any small mercies he can muster, in these elven halls.

They're led to a pretty little terrace, high enough to catch the midsummer breeze with a sweeping view of the valley laid out below, and Bree immediately detaches herself from his side to go to the railing, staring out enraptured. Thorin finds himself capable of mustering no more than a single sigh, before he turns to confer with Dwalin.

"Is anyone injured?" 

"Naught but bumps and bruises." Dwalin's reply comes quickly enough that he must have already checked the others, while Thorin was still escorting Bree down the path. "The halfling?"

Her stride was steady, and there was no hitch to her words or breathing that would betray a pain in her ribs. And she didn't suffer the same blow to the head that the trolls dealt the rest of them. He was one of the first to return to consciousness the night before, and she was already awake, huddled in her sack on Balin's other side, her face was pale and pinched with fear but not bruised or bloody. A blow strong enough to knock a dwarf from their wits would have split a soft hobbit's skull in two, so she wasn't hurt, as they were. He hadn't surrendered their weapons for nothing.

"Her tongue's as sharp as ever, that's for certain."

Dwalin laughs, a deep rolling belly-laugh that has their escort looking over warily. "Luckbearer indeed! How many can claim to escape a troll's belly _and_ a warg pack in the space of the same morning?"

"Our luck might have been better still," he grumbles back, annoyed afresh at the memory of it, "had the burglar not stolen herself halfway into the stew pot before my nephews could fetch us."

"Ah, but the lads are to blame for that one. Or did they not tell you? They lost the ponies and sent the halfling in alone to get them back, instead of calling for backup at the first."

"Ah." His gaze goes, all-unwilling, to their burglar at the railing, the nape of her neck smeared with dirt and pink from the sun. "No, they neglected to share that part of the tale."

Dwalin shrugs, a single lazy roll of his massive shoulders. "Luck enough to draw the wizard back before we roasted alive, at any rate," he says, and looks back to the elven servants milling around. "By the _stone_ , could they not go any faster? Much longer and my stomach's going to eat itself."

"Patience, Master Dwalin," Gandalf says, from directly behind them. Thorin's proud to say he doesn't flinch, but Dwalin near about jumps out of his skin, with an oath fit to scorch the ears of all who hear it. "They are working as quickly as they can. The kitchens were not prepared to host a group of your number."

Thorin thinks he hears a muttered 'tell me about it' from near the railing, but decides not to respond. It'd only encourage her.

It's the work of minutes for Elrond's people to finish arranging the seating, two long low tables with cushions for the Company and a smaller table at the dais, presumably meant for Gandalf and himself. Lord Elrond claps his hands, and the servants withdraw. "Please, all of you," he calls. "Take your seats."

There's a general thunder of booted feet as twelve dwarves all descend on the tables, but Thorin eyes the talls chairs on the dais with disfavor, already picturing how foolish he'll look clambering up, like a child in a seat too large for them. It's a slight as only an elf can deliver, sideways and smiling with a veneer of civility, and Thorin longs for the brutal honesty of his own halls, where if a dwarrow is willing to insult another, he's jolly well willing to get punched in the face for the trouble. This elvish courtesy is a bladed thing, with traps aplenty for unwary travellers who stray from the path, and Thorin is tired of it almost before it begins. Why, they're almost worse than halflings!

At the thought, an idea comes to him—a wonderful, terrible idea, worthy of his sister at her most devious. Elrond will hate it. Gandalf will glare at him, and fuss about _charm_ and _tact_ and _subtlety_. Their burglar, most likely, will try to skin him alive.

He can't possibly resist.

"Not there," he says, putting out an arm to stop Bree from passing him, when she goes to join the others. "I've another seat in mind for you."

"You're smiling," she observes warily. "What are you up to?"

"It's elves you want, little mistress?" He grabs her hand and tucks it in the crook of his elbow, then starts walking before she realizes what he’s doing. "Then elves you shall have."

She twigs to his scheme quickly enough and tries to dig in her heels, but he has a dwarf’s stubbornness and a fast hold on her arm. "Thorin, no," she says, trying to struggle free of his grip without appearing to fight and failing miserably at both. "I'm not grand enough, and covered in troll muck and who _knows_ what else besides, don't you dare make me-"

"Lord Elrond," Thorin says, arriving at the dais. He makes his bow and drags Bree down with him, straightening with an appropriately grave expression on his face. "We seem to be a chair short. Surely you didn’t mean to exclude our honored companion?"

Elrond's face gives away nothing. "Of course, how churlish of me," he says, and gestures toward the steward. "We would be honored to share our repast."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not necessary," Bree says smoothly, her fingers turned to claws in the crook of Thorin's arm. "You needn't go to any trouble for me, I'll be quite fine with the others."

"Nonsense," Elrond says. A moment later, a servant appears with another chair, placed at Elrond's elbow, and the lord waves to it with a languid gesture of his long-fingered hand. "Please, join us."

Trapped, Bree can only bow once more and detach herself from Thorin's grip to clamber into the chair. She looks sufficiently ridiculous enough at the attempt that no one pays much attention as Thorin does the same, and by the time Lord Elrond turns his gaze across the table once more, Thorin is already seated and waiting patiently with his hands folded on the table in front of him.

He thinks he sees a twinkle in the elven lord's eyes, but the servants move in with the plates before he can know for sure.

Gandalf clears his throat ostentatiously. "I believe introductions are in order, don't you?"

"Oh, most certainly," Elrond murmurs politely. Thorin thinks he might be smiling, but if so he hides it behind the rim of his goblet. "There wasn't the time, earlier."

If Gandalf takes note of the implied rebuke, he ignores it with his usual lack of care. “This is Lord Elrond Half-Elven, Lord and master of Rivendell in which we sit, the Last Homely House East of the Sea. And this is Thorin son of Thrain son of Thror, as you know, and his company that numbers thirteen. His nephews Fili and Kili, there, and his cousins Dwalin and Balin, and then Óin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, and Ori. And last but not least, in spirit if in size, might I introduce Bryony Baggins of the Shire, at Thorin’s right hand.”

The last is said with a particularly pointed sort of emphasis, but Bree does her level best to ignore it, straightening in her seat and making the best attempt at a bow as can be expected while precariously perched on a too-high chair.

"At your service, my Lord."

_She never called me by any such title,_ Thorin thinks, aggravated, but Lord Elrond merely smiles back and inclines his head in response.

"And yours, Mistress Baggins," he replies gravely. "Come now, I'm sure you're hungry. We can talk of weighty matters after you've eaten."

Thorin's budding sense of victory is short-lived, for the elves bring them naught but greens to fill their bellies. Behind him, he can hear the company grumbling about their fare, and even Gandalf picks only desultorily at his plate, seemingly far more interested in his deep cup of rich red wine. The only one eating with any degree of enjoyment is Bree, who has managed to find a way to stabilize herself in the too-large seat by propping her toes against the upper rung and is clearing away her pile of rabbit food with astonishing speed and enthusiasm.

Gandalf catches his gaze lingering wrathfully on the side of her face and leans in as Elrond turns to confer with his steward in his own tongue. "Truly, Thorin, that was ill-done of you. You could have at least left her to sit with the others."

"Misery loves company, wizard," Thorin grumbles back, and straightens in his chair before the old bastard can scold him further.

"Now then, Thorin Oakenshield," Elrond says, switching back to the common tongue as he turns his attention back to the table. “Gandalf tells me that you have recently come into possession of an Elvish blade. I would see it, if you would be so kind.”

Thorin finds himself reluctant to pass over the sword, only his for a day and yet already so comfortable in his hand, but he won’t deny the elven lord the work of his own people. He draws it from its sheath—slowly, so as not to startle the guards that lurk around the corners of the hall—and hands it, hilt-first, to Elrond.

The lord makes a pleased noise as he runs his fingers down the length of the blade. "Truly, you have found a treasure indeed," he says warmly. "This is Orcrist, the Goblin Cleaver. A famous blade, forge by the High Elves of the West. My kin."

Thorin has the sinking feeling that the blade is going to be staying here in Rivendell, but Elrond only gives him a very slight smile and hands the sword back to him. "May it serve you well."

Thorin inclines his head in silent thanks and slides the blade back into its ancient sheath, refusing to feel relieved. He needs no other sword than Deathless, of course, but he has to admit that Orcrist had a keener edge and a better balance than any he's ever crafted, and he has no mean skill in his art. He'd hate to lose it so soon after it came to his hand.

Gandalf passes over his longer sword next, and Elrond smiles again as he names it. "And this is Glamdring, the Foe-hammer, sword of the King of Gondolin. These swords were made for the goblin wars of the First Age, and are a great treasure of my people."

He sheaths Glamdring and passes it back to Gandalf. Beside him, he sees Bree looking consideringly at the hilt of her little short-sword, and swiftly kicks the leg of her chair under the table. She jerks and gives him a scorching glare, but pulls her hand away from the blade, which is all the compliance he requires. Bad enough the wizard gave her a blade in the first place—the last thing he needs is her getting fanciful notions of honor and glory, and go rushing into danger when they’ll only have to fish her back out.

“How came you by these?” Elrond inquires, and Thorin opens his mouth to respond, only to close it once more with a snap when Gandalf clears his throat meaningfully.

“We found them in a troll hoard on the Great East Road, if you can believe it!” the wizard says heartily. “Shortly before we were ambushed by the orc pack you saw.”

Elrond’s brows climb slowly. “And what, may I ask, were you doing on the Great East Road?”

Gandalf looks momentarily taken aback, as if he hadn't expected Elrond to ask him so directly. "Erm, well…"

Bree's voice rings out before the pause can pass from merely awkward into truly suspicious. "Why, travelling east, of course!" she says, with a chiming little laugh that Thorin distrusts on general principle. "It's the only safe road to use, that's what my mother always told me. Well, less safe than it used to be, I suppose, seeing as there’s now _trolls_ coming down from the north.” She shakes her head, all sorrow. “What my sainted mother would say to hear such a thing, I can’t imagine. Trolls! On the road!”

“Yes, quite unexpected,” Gandalf says quickly, seizing on the change in topic. “You know, I don’t believe any of you told me how you came to be trussed up in those sacks in the first place.”

“Well, it started when the ponies went missing,” Bree says, and leads them into the tale of their ignominious capture. The rest of the Company starts yelling corrections when she fails to tell it to their satisfaction, and moments later the tale is flowing thick and fast, with Lord Elrond hard-pressed to keep up. Bree gradually withdraws from the tale, leaving them to it, and returns to her supper—though not before she tips a wink to Thorin when the others aren't looking, her pink mouth curved up at the corners and her eyes sparkling with self-satisfaction.

Thorin grits his teeth and opens his mouth to tell her where she can shove her smugness, only to be interrupted by a raucous spate of laughter from the tables behind him. He twists around to find Bofur up on the serving-table, just straightening from an extravagant bow. "In honor of our quick-witted burglar, whose sweet tongue saved us from the supper-pot!" Bofur cries, and spreads his arms wide. "Lads, I think you know what time it is, don't you?"

A ragged cheer goes up from the company, and Bofur starts to stamp a familiar rhythm on the table-top. Beside him, Bree squeaks and buries her face in her hands, a wild flush spiralling up behind her fingers.

"Oh, no," she whispers.

Thorin looks at her huddled, mortified figure, and feels any scrap of annoyance melt away as if it's never been. He takes it all back: this might, in fact, be one of the greatest days of his life. "Oh, yes," he murmurs back, a fiendish grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Eyes up, burglar. This is in your honor!"

"I'm going to kill them all," she tells her palms.

"Theeere's an inn, there's an inn, a merry old inn, beneath an old gray hill…"

Thorin turns his grin across the table to Elrond, who is looking between Bofur and a miserable Bree with one brow raised. "Mistress Baggins wrote it, you see," he explains helpfully. "Quite the songstress, don't you think?"

A roll goes flying across the table and off the side of the railing. Bree gives an inarticulate moaning noise.

"Oh, most certainly," Elrond murmurs into his cup. Behind him, his steward's face freezes into a rictus of petrified horror.

Thorin pats Bree on the shoulder. "It's rude not to sing along," he informs her, low-voiced. "After all, it is your song."

She kicks him under the table.

###### 

After the song is concluded—all thirteen merry verses of it—Bofur takes another bow to the cheers of the company and then promptly finds himself dragged off by a very red-faced hobbit. Elrond hides a smile in his cup and leaves them to it, while the white-faced steward begins directing the servants to clean up the mess of thrown food. Gandalf murmurs something to Elrond in Sindarin, and Elrond replies briefly, brows raised, before turning his attention back to Thorin.

"Mithrandir tells me that you are bound for the Iron Hills, to investigate an artifact of your people," he says, his long-finger hands folded in front of him on the table. "I would, of course, be happy to render my assistance in this matter, if you so desire."

Thorin can feel Gandalf's heavy stare on the side of his face, but he merely inclines his head. He will not be so easily convinced to give up the treasures of his people to the first lordling that asks—as Gandalf would well have known, if he'd bothered to ask Thorin before making his plans. "Your offer is appreciated."

"I could do no less for a prince of the realm," Elrond replies smoothly, and claps his hands. "But that is for later. Haldir!"

The steward returns to his side, spine stiff. "My lord?"

"Our guests have travelled long. When they are finished with their supper-" Haldir flinches, and Elrond's thin lips quirk up at the corners. "-please see them to their rooms. I will give you time to rest and refresh yourself," Elrond tells Thorin, "and then I would be most honored if you would join me in my solar this evening, to discuss what further aid I might provide for your journey."

It's not a request, however politely phrased, and Thorin inclines his head. "The honor is mine."

"Your comrades are, of course, more than welcome to join us," Elrond adds, almost as if in afterthought, dabbing lightly at his mouth with a napkin. "Perhaps your honored companion, Mistress Bryony, would be interested to hear our discussion?"

Elrond's too well-bred to place an ironic lean on the phrase, but Thorin hears his own words repeated back at him and can see the mockery underneath well enough. "If she is not too tired, of course," Thorin says carefully. "The day has been a long one, full of dangers, and hobbits are soft creatures, and not given to conflict."

It's at that inauspicious moment that Bree reappears at his elbow, looking quite satisfied with herself. "Well, _that's_ sorted," she declares, clambering unselfconsciously back into the chair. She picks up her fork and knife once more, her lips peeled back into a fierce little grin. "He'll not make _that_ mistake again, after the strip I tore off his hide- What?" she says, blinking, as Gandalf turns aside with a little cough. "What'd I miss?"

Thorin sighs. "I'll tell you later," he promises, and meets Elrond's amused gaze with resignation. "After supper."

###### 

After they've filled up as much as they can on leafy greens and the plates have been whisked away, one of the servants bows and then leads them down one of the endless twisting hallways to the guest quarters. Most of their company are grouped together in one large hall, but Thorin is given rooms of his own, as befitting of his rank, and Bree has her quarters as well, just across the hall in the little stone pavilion overlooking the western approach. Thorin would grit his teeth at this example of elvish moralizing—she slept well enough among them on the road!—but at her little squeak of delight as she sees the view from her window, he decides to leave it well enough alone. She's complained often enough about the lack of privacy during their travels; perhaps her own space will put her in a more charitable mood.

When it comes to the burglar, he'll take every advantage he can get.

His pack is waiting for him in the sitting-room, with his axe propped against the wall next to it. There's a piece of parchment affixed to the blade, and he tugs it free, scowling down at the unnecessarily flowery elven script. It's a repeat of Elrond's invitation, complete with directions to the solar. Gandalf will almost certainly have received his own missive, assuming he doesn't already know the way, but Thorin would have more than just the wizard's questionable counsel beside him when he faces down the elven lord. Balin, of course, as the oldest and wisest among them, and the most used to dealing with elves. And…

Well, he could use one another, as much as it grates him to admit it. He hates feeling as if he's playing into the Elrond's hands, but perhaps that's what the lord intends. He's devious enough to know Thorin would be reluctant to include Bree after such a specific invitation, so perhaps it was his way of stripping Thorin of a ready ally…?

Or perhaps he's overthinking it. He can but make his decision with the facts in front of him, as always. And the fact is that Bree, for all her faults, is also watchful, and clever, and quick with a ready lie. She's talked them out of trouble twice this day, after all—even if she'd _gotten_ them into trouble the first time around—and he'd rather have her sharp tongue working for him than against him. Mahal only knows what sort of trouble she might get them into if he leaves her to her own devices.

Mind made up, he starts across the hall—and then stills, looking warily between her closed door and his own mud-smeared person. _I should probably freshen up first, or she'll throw me out before I can so much as get my nose through the door._

He cleans his face and hands, and then, remembering Bree’s encounter with the trolls the night before, strips down and takes a full bath, instead. His audience with Lord Elrond isn’t for another couple hours, and however long it will take _him_ to get clean, he suspects that Bree will be far more inclined to linger.

Sure enough, by the time he’s combed and re-braided his hair, changed his clothing and donned his armor, there’s only a muffled oath to answer his knock. He raps again—if she wants him to go away, he doesn’t have any doubt she’ll shy from telling him so—and a moment later an irritated voice calls, “Who is it?”

“Who do you think?”

There’s another curse (which he generously decides to pretend not to hear) and then a moment later the latch clicks, and the door cracks open. Bree peers through the opening, a comb in her hand and a great mass of damp coppery hair draped over her shoulder.

“What do _you_ want?”

“Not to have this conversation in the hall, for a start,” he says, which is not the fine opening he had planned, but it’s hard to be polite in the face of such annoyance. Her eyes narrow, and he props his shoulder in the doorframe, recognizing the look of a woman about to slam the door in his face. “It’s important.”

"It always is with you," she grumbles, and opens the door the rest of the way. "So? What is it?"

Thorin, about to point out that he'd _just_ said not to have this conversation in the hall, finds his complaint derailed in favor of gaping at her.

"What in Durin's name are you wearing?"

"It's called a 'dress,'" she says, deliberately patronizing, but when he merely glares mutely back at her she heaves a great sigh and steps aside to let him in. "Lord Elrond thought I would appreciate the chance to freshen my clothing, and generously made a loan of this until the others could be laundered."

Thorin drops onto one of the wide flat sofas the elves keep in their front rooms and lets his gaze roam from the stubborn lift of her chin down to her furry toes and back again. Obviously trimmed down from some well-meaning elven child's castoff, the sleeveless shift is of very fine material and the dark green silk is fetching enough with her coloring. It's only-

"And how many times did you have to hem it, before you ceased to trip?"

Bree looks like she’s considering throwing her comb at his head, but turns her back with a huff and sets to working it through her tangled curls, instead. “You said it was important. I assume you’re here for a reason, and not just to bother me?”

It takes him a moment to remember his words. “Your... diversion at supper,” he manages, yanking his gaze away from her busy hands. _She’s not one of you,_ he reminds himself. _She knows not what she implies._ “It was well-timed.”

Bree peers at him from beneath a stray lock of hair that slides down her nose. “Goodness, that sounded almost like a compliment,” she observes. “Are you trying to get me to faint?”

“No, I think even my nephews have given up that effort.”

“The snake was a good try, I’ll give them that.” She works the comb through a particularly knotty section near the nape of her neck, and Thorin lifts his gaze to the ceiling. “It’s not their fault the poor lads can’t tell a garden snake from a- Why on _Earth_ are you making that face?”

Caught, Thorin glances back to her hands and then away again. He’d accuse her of torture, if he thought she had any idea what she was doing. _Durin’s beard, at least Dwalin isn’t here to see this. I’d never heard the end of it, else._

“What think you,” he says, hoping to distract her, “of our host?”

“Lord Elrond?” She purses her lips in thought, running the comb almost idly through the long length of her curls. “He seems a very canny sort. Listens more than he speaks, and hears more than just what’s said, if you take my meaning. He didn’t buy my folderol about our travels for a moment, I’ve no doubt, but he seemed willing enough to be distracted. Gandalf likes him, but then, I’m sure Gandalf likes a great number of people I wouldn’t trust with my family silver, much less with a quest to restore your birthright.” She sets the comb aside and starts separating out a few long locks of hair at her temples. “Why? What are your impressions?”

Thorin lets out a growling sigh. “I’m not sure,” he admits, to himself and the halfling alike. “Most of my dealings have been with the king of the woodland realm, and this lord has none of his arrogance of bearing. He rode with his men to patrol his lands, so he’s no coward, and he faced down our arrival with better humor than I would have in his stead.”

“Never thought I’d hear you say something like _that._ ”

“And nor will you again, most likely.” He stretches out his legs in front of him, boots crossed at the ankle. “Yet Gandalf as good as told me not to trust him with my true purpose here, which means he may yet intend to stop us from leaving. It concerns me.”

“Everything concerns you,” she says waspishly, but her expression is thoughtful as she takes her chosen locks and starts to braid them ‘round to the back of her head with deft fingers. “Still, if Gandalf is mistrustful, I’d say you definitely should be as well. Will you be meeting with him to discuss your quest?”

It’s as good an opening as any he could hope for. “This evening, aye. I’ve been issued an ‘invitation.’” He gives the word the ironic lean it deserves. “Gandalf will be joining us, like as not, and I’ll take Balin as my second, but…”

He trails off, pride rising up to choke him before he can get the words past his throat. He could just tell her that Elrond extended the invitation to her personally, but that'd be even worse that admitting that he needs her counsel. If it were anyone else in the company he'd just give them the order and they'd be glad to be of use, but he knows well enough how well _that_ would go over. She'd likely bite his bloody nose off before he could even get the words out. It has to be a request, if she's to agree, but Thorin wasn't raised to _request_ anything of anyone. Especially of their quarrelsome burglar, who wouldn't know what to do with respect for his rank even if she managed to scrounge some up from under a cushion somewhere.

“You could be useful,” he manages, at last. He knows it’s insufficient, but he has little else to offer.

But Bree merely peers at him with keen eyes, hearing his true meaning as she always somehow seems to do. “Is that your way of asking me to come along?” she inquires mildly, an amused quirk to the corner of her mouth. “Because generally, one proceeds with the asking part first, instead of wandering into someone’s rooms to insult and complain.”

Her critique makes it easier to fold his itching fingers across his belly and glower up at her, as if this is no different than any petty quarrel on the road. “Oh, is that the way of it? And here I was thinking I could make it an order.”

She snorts and ties off her braids into a serviceable twist at the nape of her neck, shaking the rest free over her shoulders with practiced hands. “Oh yes, because that’s always worked out so tremendously well in the past.”

Thorin watches the damp red-gold strands slip over her fingers. “I wouldn’t want to startle you with any new ideas,” he says, heavily earnest. “I know hobbits prefer time to get used to such things.”

She merely snorts and detours around his sprawled legs to stash away her comb. The trailing edge of her skirt brushes against the toes of his boots, and he finds himself simultaneously wanting to pull away and to stretch out further—though to what purpose, he doesn't know. “What I’d _prefer_ is to experience the merest modicum of courtesy and social graces, but you can rest assured, my dear, that I’ve given up on _expecting_ such miracles.”

With her so close, he has to tilt his head back to look up at her. A strange sensation, to be sure. Almost as strange as being called _my dear_ in such a crosspatch tone, as if it slipped past her lips all-unknowing.

“Does that mean you’ll do it?”

“Well, I suppose,” she sighs, but he can see a dimple flash at the corner of her scowling mouth, and he knows a smile hides beneath. “But we're going to have to think of a bloody good cover story."

###### 

They don't end up needing one, as it turns out; when Thorin presents himself at the solar after daylight has fallen in truth, Gandalf is already present, deep in conversation with their elven host. "Ah, welcome, welcome!" he cries, turning to face them in a great swish of fabric. Thorin and Balin bow to Elrond, and Bree executes a quite respectable curtsey, though she looks a little confounded by the clinging elvish silk. "And dear Bryony, I'm quite glad you could join us. I was just telling Elrond about your great collection of antique maps."

"Oh, um, it's not so impressive as all that, really," Bree says, with only a moment's hesitation at this unexpected gambit. "Hobbits are not very much for travelling, as I'm sure your lordship knows."

"And yet, here you are." Elrond's gaze slides to Thorin, and then back again. "You're very far from home, little mistress. I hope Lord Thorin appreciates your company on his venture."

Bree gives a snort of laughter that she only barely manages to turn into a cough at the last second. Thorin steps on her foot while Balin clears his throat politely. "We all do, my lord," he says diplomatically. "Miss Baggins knows that, doesn't she, lass?"

"Oh, yes," Bree says solemnly, and extricates her bare toes from under his boot. "I feel extremely appreciated."

"Her assistance is invaluable to our endeavor," Thorin growls, already plotting revenge for this bit of playacting—which means he realizes his mistake only when Elrond bends his ancient gaze on him, instead.

"And what is that, if I may ask?" the elven lord inquires silkily. "I had not thought to see you in these mountains again, so many years after the Battle of Azanulbizar."

Beside him Balin squares up at his shoulder, his hand dropping as if to the hilt of his sword, only to remember that he left it in his quarters. Thorin lays a hand on his wrist, stilling him, and glares up at their host. Perhaps if Elrond had merely _asked_ , without invoking the slaughtering fields of Moria, he could have dredged up more courtesy, but as it is-

"Personal."

Gandalf lets out a windy sigh, even as Balin gives a satisfied huff of breath. "Come now, Thorin, don't be foolish. We came here for a purpose."

"Your purposes, wizard," Thorin growls. "We will continue well enough on our own."

"Will you?" Gandalf inquires. "Bryony is a talented scholar-"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bree wince and take a sidling step back, as if wishing to remove herself from any other such mentions by fading from view.

"-but neither she nor any dwarf alive can unearth the secrets in that piece of parchment!"

Thorin folds his hands in front of him and squares his shoulders, tipping up his chin. "Our business is no concern of elves."

Gandalf lets out a great sigh of exasperation. "For goodness sake, _Thorin_. Show him the map!"

"It is the legacy of my people," Thorin grits out, not looking away from Elrond's patient face. "It is mine to protect. _As are its secrets._ "

"Save me from the stubbornness of dwarves!" Gandalf clutches his staff with white-knuckled hands and looks like he's considering drubbing Thorin over the head with it. "Your pride will be your downfall. You stand here in the presence of one of the few in Middle-earth who can read that map. Show it to Lord Elrond!"

Elrond raises a single eyebrow, and Thorin grinds his teeth. Is this Gandalf's idea of tact and subtlety? To just- hand over the map to Lord Elrond, and have faith that he will be feeling generous enough to render some form of aid instead of derailing their quest? Even his kin in the Iron Hills fear the dragon's awakening—even his _sister_ begged him not to go, and she fears no one and nothing that can be faced with a sword in her hands. He's supposed to trust that an elven lord, long enamored of his own halls with little thought to the world beyond his borders, will have no qualms helping them with their quest and sending them on their way? No.

But it's true that there are things they do not know; things they _must_ know, if they are to succeed in their aims. If Elrond can tell them how to find the hidden door to his home, it will gall him down to the depths of his soul, but his path is clear.

He reaches into his surcoat and takes out the map.

"Thorin, no," Balin says, grabbing for his arm, but Thorin shrugs him off and extends the precious parchment to their waiting host. He looks down, and watches as one long-fingered hand comes up and gently takes the map from his fingers and unfolds it.

"Erebor." He says it the way Thranduil always did, with the long rolling r's of the elven tongue, and Thorin slowly lifts his gaze to meet Elrond's ageless gaze once more, feeling the kiss of an axe at the back of his neck, waiting to fall if he says so much as a single wrong word. "What is your interest in this map?"

His silky tone gives no doubt that he knows the answer to this question already, and finds no favor in it. Thorin's heart sinks like a stone in his chest, but still he tips up his chin and opens his mouth to answer, because he will not be scolded like a child by this sylvan lord, and he will not be denied-

"It's mainly academic," Gandalf hastens to answer, shooting Thorin a warning look. "As you know, this sort of artifact sometimes contains, hmm, hidden text?"

Thorin shuts his mouth with a snap.

"We thought to bring Bryony to the Iron Hills to consult with the scholars there," Gandalf continues, still in that same blustery tone, "but as fate brought us to your door, it seemed foolish to pass up the opportunity to consult with such a learned expert. You still read Ancient Dwarvish, do you not?"

Elrond gives Gandalf a look that says that he knows very well what he's up to and doesn't quite approve, but elves have their pride the same as any man, dwarf, or hobbit, and between the flattery to his ego and the challenge to his skills, his pointed look lasts only a moment before he gives a stifled, near-silent _hmm_ of reluctant interest and takes the map over the shard of moonlight for easier viewing.

Behind his back, Gandalf rolls his eyes pointedly at Thorin. Thorin inclines his head in return, gratitude welling in his throat even if he can't safely say the words with their host still standing so close. _Well! Apparently wizards are good for something, after all._

A few feet away, Elrond turns the map this way and that, making considering noises in the back of his throat. "Ah," he says, after a moment. " _Cirth ithil_."

"Moon runes," Gandalf breathes, with some wonder. "Of course! An easy thing to miss."

This last is said more or less in an aside to Bree, who looks somewhat startled to have been so suddenly included once more in this conversation, but Elrond gives another thoughtful hum, as if Gandalf had been speaking to him. "Well, in this case, that is true. Moon runes can only be read by the light of a moon of the same shape and season as the day on which they were written."

The answer seems obvious, if Elrond was able to divine their presence on the map, but still Thorin has to ask, hope welling like a spring in his chest: "Can you read them?"

Elrond inclines his head. "Yes," he says. The sound of four held breaths released in tandem is very noisy indeed, and the faintest of smiles curls the corner of Elrond's thin lips. "Though not here, not easily at least. I have a moon-mount near the top of the western wall. That is, if you and your honored companions could spare me another hour, after such a long day?"

It's all Thorin can do not to laugh in relief. "I believe," he says, as gravely as he can muster, "that we will find a way to manage. Lead on, Lord Elrond."

"Good, good! Follow me, please; the night sky is cloudy and we have no time to waste."

He sweeps out of his solar, Gandalf falling in at his heels and looking as smug as if he divined the runes himself. It's only when he passes that Thorin looks at Bree and remembers that she's been awake as long as any of them, without dwarven endurance that makes light of such trials. She probably would have been abed long since, if it weren't for his interference; likely she's desperate to seek it now, after two days and a night with no rest.

"Balin and I will be sufficient for this," Thorin tells her, low-voiced. "I'm sure Lord Elrond won't notice your absence now. You can go back to your rooms and sleep."

She looks at him as if he'd just suggested she fornicate with a goat. "If you think you'll be rid of me _now,_ when things are just getting interesting, you're more fool than I thought! _You_ can go to bed, if you wish - I'm going to find out what's written on the map!" And so saying, she puts her little nose in the air and turns on her heel with a swish of skirts to follow in Gandalf wake.

Thorin exchanges a long-suffering look with Balin. "Halflings!" he says, after a moment, and Balin chuckles quietly.

"We'd best go after her, laddie. No telling what she'll say without you."

"Nothing she won't say to my face, most likely," Thorin grumbles, but he's smiling to himself as he strides down the hall after her.

She's got spirit, their burglar. If nothing else, he has to give her that.

###### 

It's quite late when the three of them make their way back to quarters that evening, Gandalf staying behind to 'discuss' some things with Elrond as Bree leads them back to the guest hall. "Since you certainly can't be trusted to manage it," she tells Thorin with some asperity, but he's in far too good a mood to let himself be bothered by her petty squabbles, and he merely shrugs in assent and falls in at her heels. If she thinks she can get them back through these endless twisting hallways on her own, she is more than welcome to try.

"I'm sorry I spoke out of turn, before," Balin tells him, his low voice heavy with self-recrimination. "It was ill-done of me—especially after we managed to get so far without revealing our purpose here."

"I spoke first, if you'll remember; if there is any blame to be laid, it's at my feet. But if you think our host had any doubt as to our purpose before then, you're fooling yourself. Gandalf's falsehood made it discourteous for him to ask and openly name us liars, but he was always going to know from the moment he saw that map."

"Aye, that's true enough," Balin sighs. "Still. I don't like it. What if he tries to stop us from leaving?"

"Then we go around him, or over him, or through him, as we have done with every obstacle before now and will do with every obstacle yet before us." Thorin claps him on the shoulder. "Cheer up, old friend! We can't say it's been a wasted trip, after what we've gotten tonight. Directions to the door! I thought we'd be a month on the mountainside, just trying to find our way in."

"We still don't know what it means, though," Balin points out, pessimistic to the last. "We know _when,_ but the rest of it—all of Erebor is made of gray stone, as you might recall, and the last reports we've had from the River-Runners down to Laketown say that nothing living ventures to the mountain peak. How are we to know that a thrush will even approach the door, with a dragon living underneath?"

"Good questions, all," Thorin says. "But it's still more than we had this morning. The rest we can work out on the road. We'll have time enough."

"Ach! Don't remind me." Balin runs a hand over his snowy beard, tugging in irritation. "We'll have to make for the Giant's Pass, won't we? I doubt Elrond killed all of our pursuers, and if they're hunting us-"

"-they'll be waiting for us along the Low Road. I know."

"It's a long road through the Wilds, laddie," Balin warns him. "We'll have to trek a fair ways north of here first, and the Giant's crossing is a rough one. To get to the Old Ford from that route is the better part of a season, and Durin's Day is scarce four months from now."

"I know that as well," Thorin says, not without some heat, for he's been churning over the same troublesome math since the word 'Durin's Day' first spilled from Elrond's lips. "Think you we should test our luck against the orcs instead? We number only fourteen, and-" He shoots a cautious look ahead of them: Bree is giving every appearance of ignoring their conversation, but he's been fooled by that before. "-not all of us are warriors," he finishes, somewhat more tactfully than he might have otherwise. "Against bandits on the roadway, or a few orc scavengers at the pass, certainly, but a full pack of hunters? Mounted on wargs?"

"Ah, it's truth you speak right enough, loathe as I am to hear it." Balin tugs at his beard again, scowling. "Bugger. Well, nothing for it, I suppose. I'll go over my maps tomorrow, work us out a path. Assuming you weren't planning to leave with the dawn?"

"No, we need our rest." He grins over at Balin. "And perhaps our lordship will think better of keeping us here, with thirteen dwarrows on our _best_ behavior."

Balin taps the side of his nose, grinning back. "I hear you, laddie. I'll let the others know."

A minute later Thorin hears a great deal of shouting and laughter and stamping of feet coming from one of the doors up ahead, and Bree pulls up to a halt in front of it with a sharp, sarcastic curtsey. (How a body can make a _curtsey_ seem sarcastic is beyond him, but then halflings clearly have powers that he does not.) "Your quarters, gentlemen. And here I bid you good eve."

"Not so fast," Thorin says, snagging her sleeve before she can suit action to word, "I'm in the room across from you, remember? Wait just a moment, and I'll escort you the rest of the way."

"You mean you don't know the way without me," she grumbles, but goes to lean against the wall nonetheless, apparently too tired to argue.

There's a loud _thump_ as something heavy impacts the other side of the wall a few feet from their heads, and Thorin exchanges an amused look with Balin, who looks near as tired as the burglar. "How many days, do you wager, will they spend disinfecting these rooms after we've left?"

“Burn it down and start afresh, more likely,” Balin laughs. “Will you give them the news, then? Or shall I?”

He’s tempted—there’s nothing better for the end of a long day than a draught of ale and the company of friends, and this day has been longer than most. But there is still the burglar, and when he glances over his shoulder he sees her propped precariously against the wall, eyes half-closed as if she'll fall asleep where she stands. If the day's been long for _him,_ who's used to hard travel and harder fights, it's a marvel their soft halfling is still on her sturdy feet at all. And for all of her grumbling, he mislikes the thought of her wandering these halls alone. No one here would offer her harm, he's sure, and awake and rested her sharp tongue is defense enough for any that would be foolish enough to accost her, but right now she's halfway to sleep and vulnerable, with all the hours he's kept her from her bed already. He can't abandoned her now.

“Nay, I’ll leave the joy of that to you,” he says, and claps his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll see the burglar to her bed and then go to seek my own.”

Balin laughs quietly, his voice pitched low so as to keep Bree from overhearing. “Don’t see her too far, laddie, or you’ll neither of you be any use tomorrow.”

It takes his tired brain a moment to catch Balin's meaning, and when he does Thorin straightens up fast, temper giving him a momentary boost of energy. If anyone else had said such a thing he’d have a hand on his blade right now, but as it’s Balin he contents himself with a growled, “Watch your tongue _,_ old friend.”

Balin holds up his hands, his gaze dancing with amusement. “Just a bit of a joke, is all. You’ve honor enough to withstand a bit of teasing—as does our burglar, for that matter. No harm meant.”

“Good.” Which doesn't answer why Balin thought that _that_ , of all things, would be fair game for a jest, but that's an issue for another day. “Tell the others to be ready. Tomorrow we rest and make our plans, but we’ll leave the morning after.”

Assuming they can pry the wizard away from their host, he adds silently to himself. They’ll leave without Gandalf if they have to, but he mislikes the idea of travelling the dark spaces of the mountains on foot. Any extra sword to their number, even from a great meddling trickster like him, can only be to their use.

“Aye, I’ll do that.” Balin nods his farewell and opens the door. A sudden spike of sound spills out, eleven dwarrows managing to sound like an entire ale-hall of soldiers, and then Balin slips through and shuts the door behind him, and the noise cuts off like butter under a hot knife.

Behind him, the hobbit jerks upright, limbs flailing to keep her from toppling over. “What! I’m awake, I’m good, no napping here, nosir.”

He can’t help but smile at the sleepy, rumpled mess of her, her hair spilling mostly loose over her shoulders and her makeshift gown starting to slide free on one shoulder, though he has his expression back to stern by the time she looks up. “Come now, Mistress Baggins, time for all good burglars to seek their bed. We’ve had a very long pair of days.”

“I’m fine,” she argues—or tries to, until a yawn cuts off her words in the middle _._ She glares at him, as if daring him to say something. “You only call me ‘Mistress Baggins’ when you’re annoyed with me.”

Not true—he also uses it when he _wishes_ he were annoyed, and is near to laughter instead. But if she hasn’t noticed he’s not in any hurry to inform her, so he fixes an expression of great forbearance on his face and informs her, “The longer you stand here arguing, the longer you keep me from rest as well.”

“Well, if it’s for your benefit, I suppose,” she says primly, and pushes away from the wall. “Lead on, Master Oakenshield, since you're so eager to play escort—no, not _that_ way. Good Lord, have you no sense of direction at all?"

###### 

He rises late the next morning, and when he ventures forth with stomach rumbling he finds the door across from his standing open, with no hobbit to be found inside. Nor is she at breakfast, when he manages to find his way back to the terrace. (Only having to backtrack the once, not that he thinks he’ll mention such a feat to the burglar.) Dwalin is there, however, sharing a pipe with Gloin and Nori, while Bombur grazes from what’s left of the platters with a dissatisfied expression on his face.

“More rabbit food?”

“Aye,” Gloin grunts, around the stem of the pipe. “Bread’s not half bad, though, and it sticks to your ribs something proper.”

“The berries are sweet enough,” Nori offers, across from him. “Not much left after the burglar got at ‘em, though.”

“Ah, so she did come by.” Thorin takes their advice, filling his plate with bread and fried potatoes and the few overripe berries left at the bottom of the bowl, and brings his plate back to the table. “I was wondering where she went.”

“Come and gone, more like,” Dwalin snorts. “Said she was off to have a look at the city—and it’s no use scowling at me, I tried to stop her,” he adds, when Thorin does just that. “ _You_ can’t manage to stop the blasted halfling from doing as she pleases, think you I would fare any better?"

He’s not wrong, but Thorin still grumbles to himself as he settles down on the cushion next to them, folding his legs like a tailor to get his knees to fit under the low table. “None of us should be wandering off.”

“Don’t worry, your madge, I doubt the wood sprites plan to steal your burglar.” Dwalin ducks the elbow Thorin throws at his neck, looking pleased with himself. “She’ll be well enough on her own.”

“Better than the lads, at least,” Gloin says, exhaling smoke and passing the pipe off to Dwalin. "They left not a half-hour past."

Thorin pauses with a bite of potatoes halfway to his mouth. "Alone?"

"M'brothers went along," Nori assures him. "They'll keep 'em in line."

Thorin, privately, thinks that he'll believe it when he sees it. Ori's a sweet lad and brave enough, when it counts, but he's not overly burdened with spine and his nephews can be charming when they put their minds to it. They’re more likely to pull him into their mischief than to be dragged back out.

Then again, if ever there's a fusspot soul stern enough to ride herd on Fili and Kili, Dori is almost certainly the one.

"I wish them luck," Thorin says, and returns to his breakfast.

He lingers on the terrace after he's finished his meal—Gloin spoke true, the bread _does_ stick to the ribs—and pulls out his own pipe, amusing himself by blowing smoke-rings off the balcony. At some point servants come and clear away the plates, eyeing him sideways and twittering to each other in their strange tongue, sounding like nothing so much as a chattering brook running over stones. Thorin merely smirks back and lounges more heavily on his elbows, watching them with half-lidded eyes until the twittering grows louder and they take themselves away.

"What are you up to?" Dwalin grunts, when they're gone. "If you mean to taunt them, you make a poor effort of it. I think the short one might knock on your door later, after the look you gave him."

Thorin clouts Dwalin about the ear, and receives a shove of his shoulder in return, much to Gloin's amusement. "Would you rather them fearful?"

" _Aye._ "

"This is why your brother despairs of you off the battlefield, you know." He lets his shoulder knock against Dwalin's. "Let them think us petty lordlings from West, naught but blade and bluster. They'll carry the tales to their betters, and the guards won't watch us so close."

Dwalin gives a satisfied rumble of a sigh, deep in his chest. "Ah, so you _do_ mean to leave this place. I was starting to wonder."

"Tomorrow, at the latest. We've scarcely four months to cross the wilds, on foot. I won't tarry here a moment longer than we have to."

Dwalin gives him a disgusted look. "So why are we still _here_?"

"Because we're missing a wizard and a burglar, and I'll not leave without them." Thorin blows another smoke-ring skyward, engulfing Nori's poorer effort. Curses ring out from the other side of the terrace. "And because they'll be expecting it. It'll be easier to slip away in the wee hours of the morning, when our hosts are abed."

"Hmmph," Dwalin says, but he looks thoughtful. "Can't say as I'd mind getting one over on the tree-shaggers. Make up a bit for all the folderol at dinner last night."

Thorin scowls a bit, thinking of how quickly Elrond had turned his trick with Bree against him. "You've _no_ idea."

A thunder of booted feet sounds in the hallway before Dwalin can respond, and his old friend rolls his eyes, tapping out his pipe onto the terrace stones. "Mahal, are they dwarves or oliphants?"

Thorin laughs quietly as Kili bursts into the room, one bare step ahead of his brother. "Uncle!" he cries. "You'll never believe what we found."

"Indeed?" Thorin exhales smoke from his nose in a great cloud, feeling the sweet burn of pipe-weed steal through his veins like summer sunshine. "I'm sure you're about to tell me."

Fili peers over his brother's shoulder, grinning obnoxiously. " _Fountains,_ " he intones. "Big ones, too, with room enough for all of us. Think they'd mind if we took a dip?" 

Thorin grins to himself around the stem of his pipe. "I'm sure they'll be delighted," he says solemnly.

###### 

He sees Bree several times throughout the day, though always at a distance, wandering through some pillared hall or ambling across an open walkway. He considers going after her once or twice, but gives it up as a futile effort before he even begins. He'd never find his way around the infernal elven halls, endlessly twisting this way or that and seeming to lead nowhere or at times back upon themselves, and even if he were to make his way to where he saw her last, she'd be long gone by the time he got there. If she wanted to rejoin them, she would: they've gone to some effort to make pests of themselves, and she could hardly fail to find them, from the shouting.

Once, she sees him looking back at her, and lifts her hand in mocking salute. What expression her face holds, he can't see at a distance—and in truth, he's a little afraid to know.

Eventually the day winds to a close, and the strain on the faces of the elven servants grows ever more palpable. Thorin judges they’ve sufficiently played the part of unlettered savages, and he sends the company to their quarters. “Eat well, clean your gear, and pack your things,” he tells them, low-voiced. “Take any food you think will keep and make sure your water skins are full. We leave at dawn.”

“What of our burglar?” Dwalin asks, arms folded over his chest. “Has she yet returned?”

He sees no light coming from those so-admired windows in her quarters. “If she doesn’t come back by moonrise, I’ll go looking,” Thorin sighs. “Go on, make sure the others are ready.” He smirks up at him. “And if the elves think us merely carousing the night away-”

“All to the better, aye, I know.” Dwalin snorts and straightens away from the wall. “Don’t get too lost chasing the halfling,” he advises. “She’ll never let you hear the end of it, else.”

“Your sage advice,” Thorin says, through gritted teeth, “is, as always, appreciated.”

Dwalin laughs as he heads off down after the others.

Thorin sits down at the top of the steps to wait for the hobbit. He’s sure she won’t be but so far behind the rest of them—supper this evening was to be served in their quarters, and it’s certainly not like her to miss a meal.

And sure enough, the sun has barely fallen behind the cliffs when he spots her ambling up the long walkway from the north, her slight form nearly fading into the shadows of the gathering twilight gloom. None of the company seem to notice her arrival, not even when she passes right underneath their balcony.

_Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet,_ Gandalf told him that first night, _and have small magics that allow them to pass unseen if they choose._ Thorin doesn’t know if it’s magic, precisely—though he supposes a wizard would know better than he—but she certainly manages to go overlooked more often than is entirely reasonable, even for such a small creature. Even Gandalf, with his keen wizard’s gaze, will sometimes lose track of her in a group; Thorin’s often seen him scanning their number when they make camp in the evenings, counting silently to himself, only to fall short for a moment or two before he spots Bree in the middle.

Thorin doesn’t pretend to understand it. Maybe dwarves are different, is all, with eyes built to find the faintest gleam of gold in the darkness. She can sneak up on him well enough on those hobbity feet, if she’s a mind, but _he_ certainly never manages to overlook her in a crowd. She’s usually glaring at him, for one thing; it makes her very difficult to miss.

As she approaches he sees that she hasn’t spotted him yet—no dwarven gift for deep-sight _there_ —and when she pauses, caught by the sound of approaching voices below, he gathers himself and withdraws down to the stairwell below, keeping himself in shadow. Rarely does he get the chance to surprise _her,_ for a change, and he’ll not give up the opportunity when one so readily presents itself.

She drifts up to the balcony, doing a very bad job of pretending not to listen to whatever conversation below caught her interest, and Thorin waits until she’s turned to the railing before he eases out of the doorway and up the steps behind her. He hasn’t quite her gift for silence, heavy and well-shod as he is, but she’s distracted enough that she makes no note of his presence as he leans against the stone pillar behind her back. In a moment she’ll turn and see him, or perhaps he’ll clear his throat, and-

“And what if we succeed?” comes Gandalf’s voice, from below. “If the dwarves take back the mountain, our defenses in the East will be strengthened.”

“It is a dangerous move, Gandalf,” Elrond says in reply, as close to heated as Thorin can imagine from the smooth-tongued lord.

Ah, no wonder their burglar’s attention was caught. _Clever little sneak-thief,_ Thorin thinks, folding his arms across his chest, _to listen at the keyholes most useful. I wonder what else she might have picked up on her rambles?_

“It is also dangerous to do nothing!” Gandalf grumbles in return. “Oh, come- The throne of Erebor is Thorin’s _birthright_. What is it that you fear?”

Maybe Thorin makes a noise; a breath, perhaps, an exhale just loud enough to be caught by her sharp ears. Or maybe she just feels his presence, darkening with temper as he is to hear others squabbling over his quest as if they have any _right_ to determine the outcome. Whatever it is, she turns just enough to catch sight of him—and flinches, awkwardness skidding across her face like a stormcloud over the plains, as she realizes he can hear the argument as well.

He inclines his head, trying very hard not to smile.

She draws up her shoulders and turns back to the railing with a huff, angled just so as to keep one eye on him. Thorin would almost laugh at the awkward hunch of her, caught in some confoundedly impossible trap of her fussy Shire manners, if it wasn’t for Elrond’s reply:

“Have you _forgotten?_ ” he demands, his voice lowered with feeling but still audible above. “A strain of madness runs deep in that family.”

Thorin straightens from the pillar in a breathless rush, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword on instinct before he remembers himself and lets it fall away. In front of him, Bree goes very still, the line of her narrow shoulders turning to stone under his gaze, but for an unexpected mercy, doesn’t turn to look him in the eye.

“His grandfather lost his mind,” Elrond continues, every word a hammer-blow to his heart. “His father likely succumbed to the same sickness. Can you _swear_ Thorin Oakenshield will not also fall?”

Gandalf says nothing, and Thorin turns away, sickness and shame a roil in his belly. _No, of course he would not swear,_ Thorin thinks dully, staring down at the rough gray stone of the elven path. _How could he? How could he, when even this interfering elven busybody knows-_

Softer now, Elrond continues, “Gandalf, these decisions do not rest with us alone. It is not up to you, or me, to redraw the map of Middle-Earth.”

“With or without your help, these dwarves will march on the Mountain,” Gandalf snaps back. “They’re determined to reclaim their homeland. I do not believe that Thorin Oakenshield-”

Whatever Gandalf does or does not believe about him, he will never know, because they pass from the walkway and into a covered alcove, and his voice fades from their hearing.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Bree take a deep, fortifying breath, and then turn to face him. “Thorin-”

“Enjoy your last free evening, halfling,” he tells her, and finds he cannot even enjoy the way she flinches from the gravel in his voice. “And then pack your things. We leave at dawn.”

And then he brushes past her before she can say anything else and closes the flimsy elvish door behind him with a slam.

###### 

A servant comes by at some point with a tray of supper, and presumably does the same for their burglar, though he does not ask. Her door is closed, and light shines beneath the frame, but she might have already gone to spend the evening with the company, after her day of lonely rambles.

He only hopes she remembers to pack first.

He nibbles desultorily from the plate of greens, wrapping the bread and cheese in a bit of cloth to eat on the road, and when that's done he pulls off his armor and sets to cleaning it, likely for the last time before a long few months on the road. When every scale of it is gleaming and he's laid it out over the table to dry, he looks at the time, grumbles to himself, and falls to sharpening Orcrist, for lack of anything better to do.

In truth, the elven blade doesn't need much of such attention, and proves somewhat insufficient to lose his thoughts in the task. Every stroke of the whetstone is like a hammer-beat of shame, _his grandfather lost his mind_ in the upstroke, _his father succumbed to the same_ on the down. He’s always judged it likely that Gandalf, at least, knew of the dragon-sickness, but the wizard had ever been a great friend of their line, as much as a wizard can be a friend to aught but his own ends. To learn the tale traveled so far, however…

And under all of it, of course, is the most shameful truth of all: that if someone were to ask Thorin to swear upon his grandfather's grave that he'd never fall prey to the same weakness, he'd be forced to stay silent. Because Elrond, curse that beardless son a whore to the void and back, spoke the truth. He _doesn't_ know if he shares the weakness of his fathers. He _doesn't_ know if he-

A knock sounds on the door.

It's likely Fili or Kili with some triviality, he tells himself, or more likely the elven servant come to retrieve his tray. But even over the roar of his own thoughts he knows he tells himself falsehoods. There's really only one person it could be.

They stand there for a moment in the doorway, both struck with surprise: him that she'd come to his door after the scene on the balcony, and Bree from the suddenness with which he yanks open said door. She's still wearing the makeshift gown, properly dusty around the hem after a day of her rambles, and her hair is starting to come loose from its fastenings. She has dark bottle labeled with some sort of crinkling parchment in one hand, and the other is twisted in her skirts, belying the unease hidden by her look of stubborn irritation.

"...Greetings," he says, a beat too late.

"Yes, hello, good evening." She sounds impatient, but he can see the flicker in her usually fearless gaze and knows that the brusqueness is just a cover for the awkwardness that lingers between them. "Are you going to let me in, or just stand there staring all night while you leave me in the hallway?" 

He wasn't _staring,_ he was- Never mind. “Well, I was considering it, but then I noticed you came bearing gifts.” He shifts to stand more fully in the doorway, in case she gets any bright ideas about bullying her way past him, and nods to the bottle in her hand. “Too much to hope it’s not of elvish make?”

She holds it up, revealing the delicate script on the parchment. “I found this in one of the cabinets in the sitting room," she says. “I'm sure it’s not a candle on my blackcurrant homebrew, but alas, needs must. Sufficient bribe?”

He stares at her a moment longer, deliberating. She tips up her chin.

“Well, I suppose I could use a drink,” he allows, strangely fond, and steps back to let her in. “Better you than one of those blasted tree-shaggers.”

“Only marginally, I’m sure.”

He sighs. He’d been trying to turn his thoughts _away_ from Elrond’s comments, not seeking reminders—although even to himself, he has to admit he hasn’t been very successful. “And yet, here you are.”

She holds up the bottle again. “I thought I’d clear the air.”

“Is this some strange hobbit tradition, then? Bringing spirits as salve for awkwardness?”

“You’d rather we let it fester? Better this way, to have it out all at once, and tomorrow we can go back to yelling at each other over your nephews’ heads, like normal.”

“I don’t yell at you,” he says, and swipes the bottle out of her hand. “Give me that.”

“Oh no, you don’t yell,” she assures him. He glances around futilely for a corkscrew, then shrugs and opens it with his teeth. “You merely express your opinion. Loudly. My word, was that really necessary?”

“Do you have a corkscrew in one of your nonexistent pockets, then?”

She pats her skirts defensively. “You could have used a _knife._ Or are you going to tell me you’re not carrying one of those?”

“This was faster,” he says, and swigs the bottle. Elven wine, feh. “It tastes like flowers.”

“That’s because it’s probably made from them,” she tells him, like he’s simple. “Give that back.”

He holds it protectively against his chest. “It was my bribe.”

“What, and you’d rather _I_ should be sober and clear-headed for this conversation?”

“If you can lose your head from a few mouthfuls of wine, hobbit, your folk are a great deal less sturdy than the stories would have me believe,” he grumbles, but he hands it back. She immediately takes a draught straight from the bottle, just as he had. “I thought you hobbits were above such uncivilized behavior.”

“Well, perhaps you dwarves are corrupting me with your uncivilized ways.” She takes another swig before handing it back. “So. Elrond was gossiping rather out of turn, from the sound of things.”

Isn’t it just like her, he thinks, with mingled irritation and amusement, to turn his family’s greatest shame into naught but unkind parlor-room talk. “Aye, that’s one way of putting it.”

“Is it true?” She holds his gaze with the saying of it, though a blush rises hard into her cheeks to ask so directly. “About your grandfather?”

_Stone preserve me from meddling halflings,_ he thinks, half-despairing, and takes another swig. The bottle isn’t going to last long, at this rate. “It’s… true enough,” he says reluctantly. _If I don’t speak of it she’ll only go to Balin,_ he tells himself, though in his heart he knows that Balin would never betray him to tell her—and nor, in truth, can he really believe she’d go behind his back in such a manner. “The healers called it the ‘dragon-sickness,’ though none would say such in my hearing after the dragon came in truth. Until Thror, it hadn’t been seen in many an age.”

She says nothing, just waits for him to continue.

“It didn’t happen all at once,” he tells her, willing her to understand. “Like many fevers, it took him slow, and he was half-gone by the time we knew. He used to spend long hours in the treasure-hall, just running coins through his hands like water. My father and I had taken up most of the duties of rule, by then.”

“How old were you?”

It’s not the question he expected her to ask, and it throws him, stumbling to count back the dusty years of his memory. “When it started? Sixty, perhaps seventy summers.”

A small line creases her forehead. “Sixty, that’s… young, for dwarves. Isn’t it?”

“Old enough,” he snaps, “to do what needed doing.”

“Yes,” she murmurs, soft when he expects her to be sharp. “I’m sure you were.”

“Anyway.” He wraps his fingers more tightly around the neck of the bottle, hoping she can’t see the shake in his hands. “After the dragon came, he came back to himself, after a time. Well enough to lead us in battle at Moria.” And well she knows how that ended, thanks to Balin's tales.

“And your father?”

He closes his eyes. “A tale for a different time, halfling.”

“Of course,” she murmurs, but even the gravel in his voice isn't enough to deter their determined burglar, and after a moment's pause she clears her throat only a little awkwardly, squaring her shoulders when he looks at her once more. "Still. You're not as bad as all _that,_ surely? Stubborn, most certainly, and overfond of getting your own way, and lord knows you've a sour temper to rival my cousin Lobelia, which is truly an accomplishment-"

"If this is your way of 'clearing the air,'" he says, glaring, "I'd say it's a wonder you hobbits haven't all killed each other by now."

"-but your only 'madness' is in thinking you can be trusted to tell which direction is north."

“That was _one time-_ ” he says automatically—and then stops, caught by the edge of her blooming smile, as he realizes what she's just said. “Well.”

“And besides,” she continues blithely, swiping the bottle out of his slackening hands, “even if you do go a bit dotty, what’s the harm? Kinging surely can’t be as important as all that. Why, our last Thain thought his candlesticks sung him to sleep at night, and we still got on just fine, didn’t we?”

“I-” he splutters. “To begin with, that’s not even a _word,_ and-”

She breaks down in giggles before he can begin to express all of the things that were wrong with her _unbelievably insulting_ comparison, which has the annoying side-effect of cutting off the leading edge of his temper before it can gain any momentum. “Oh my lord, Thorin, your face, _really._ ”

“I’m relieved,” he grumbles, “to be able to serve so well for your amusement.”

“Although you should considering working on that temper of yours before you take the throne."

“I’ll take your advice in the spirit which it was intended,” he says darkly, but she only grins up at him, shameless. “Though I’m glad to hear you’re so confident in the outcome of our quest.”

She shrugs and takes a swig of wine, licking a stray droplet from the corner of her mouth. “What’s a dragon, really?”

“You’re jesting, surely.”

“Well—a little bit, yes.” She dimples up at him. “I’m sure we’ll succeed, one way or another. I don’t believe you’d allow us to fail, at any road.”

Suddenly breathless, he filches the bottle back from her hands and takes another draught of wine to hide his expression. “Was that a compliment?”

“Perhaps. A close cousin, at the least.”

“If you’re not careful,” he tells her gravely, “I might actually faint from the shock.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you. You’re far too heavy for me to move, and I’d have to fetch Dwalin to carry you.”

“ _If_ such a thing were to occur, I’d beg you leave me where I fall, rather than wake to face his teasing.”

“I will,” she says, eyes dancing, “be sure to keep that in mind.”

But then the silence falls between them, that earlier awkwardness returning, and Thorin is hit with the realization that this is likely the longest they’ve ever spoken without breaking into some form of quarrel. _I don’t want this to end,_ he thinks, a little surprised at himself. But perhaps it's no surprise at all. Bree, for all her faults, which are _many_ and _varied_ , does have an odd knack for filling up whatever space she happens to occupy, and Thorin finds himself reluctant to go back to the grinding solitude of his own relentlessly repeating thoughts. But he neither does he know how to hold onto the odd, fractured camaraderie they’ve built between them in the last few minutes—and so he says nothing, and the silence only grows.

“Well,” she says, slowly, when the pause threatens to pass from merely awkward into excruciating. He can his see his own reluctance mirrored in her face, though she bites her lip to hide it. “This has been- a good chat, to be sure. Good that we could clear things up! So, I’ll just be, er, off, and I’m sure we’ll be back to normal tom-”

“Wait,” he says, and she falls silent uncharacteristically quickly, an expectant expression on her face _._ “You could… stay?" He didn't mean that to come out sounding like a question. "For supper," he adds hastily, scrambling for an excuse that doesn't make him sound like a mawkish lad, afeared to be alone in the dark. “The elves brought me naught but leaves again, and I’ve eaten as much as I can stomach.”

Bree's expectant expression melts into a smile, a little devilish around the edges. “Why, Master Oakenshield,” she murmurs, inclining her head. _When did she get so close?_ “How positively forward of you.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you, Mistress Baggins,” he murmurs back, matching his low, confiding tone to hers, “it’s the value of plain speaking.”

“I think that was an insult,” she accuses, but her smile's turned into a grin now, bright as the sunrise and twice as warm. “One might think you don't actually want my company after all-"

He opens his mouth.

"-but unfortunately for you, I'm inclined to accept regardless. The lads are too deep in their cups to be good company, and the elves are a touch imposing for conversation. Only-”

He raises an eyebrow, determinedly ignoring the way his belly goes watery with relief. “Aye?”

“Well, I’ve only the one bottle of wine, and we’ve nearly finished it. Any further such provisions are _entirely_ your responsibility.”

“Some burglar you are,” he grumbles, but his attempt hide his smile in his beard is somewhat unsuccessful, judging by her saucy grin. “You’re in luck, m’lady hobbit, for I believe I found another such bottle earlier."

"And so the Company provides," she laughs. "Very well then, let's see it."

He goes to the sideboard and fetches out another bottle, a little taller and thinner than hers but labelled much the same. "Here we are. More flowers, like as not, but as you said, needs must."

“Just because your dwarven palate is sadly unrefined doesn’t meant the rest of us can’t appreciate fine fermentation,” she says, and holds out her hand. “Give over.”

“Aye, there’s the famed manners of halflings,” he grumbles, but hands it over and finishes their first bottle with one long swallow. “If you give me a moment, there’s likely a glass or two in one of these infernal elven cupboards.”

“Why start now?” she says, and right before his eyes, she puts her teeth to the cork and pulls it free with a mighty yank. “Embrace the uncivilization.”

“...Truly, we must have been a bad influence,” he says, after a moment, and feels his chest warm with her laughter. “Give that back.”

She holds it behind her back and dimples up at him. “Food first,” she demands. “I was promised supper, and surely a king should never break his promises.”

“I’m not a king,” he tells her, some unnamed emotion fluttering at the back of his throat like a trapped bird, but she merely smiles back at him, her gray eyes gone dark with promise.

“Not yet.”

###### 

They end up arrayed on the floor in front of the sofa, the supper-tray between them heaped high with his greens and the fresh sliced fruit that had been delivered to her room. (“Because I mentioned how much I liked them, Thorin, _honestly._ It’s like you know nothing of how hosting customs work!”) She points him to things she thinks will work best with a dwarven palate (“Oh lord, not the watercress, even Bombur won’t touch the stuff, says it makes his tongue go numb.”) and cedes him a majority portion of the sweet melon, though only after a minor skirmish between her fork and his eating-knife in the middle of the tray that nearly ends in bloodshed. (“Well, I suppose if it’s your _favorite._ ”)

Conversation flows smoothly enough with food before them, though not without a few false starts and more than a few cross words. Still, Thorin finds it hard to take true offense when she’s laughing at him so, pink-cheeked with pleasure and her hair slipping into her eyes. She’s a charming enough creature, the hobbit, when she chooses to be.

Perhaps sometimes even when she does not.

Eventually they decimate the tray down to a few scraps and seeds, and Bree pushes it to the side, grabbing the now half-empty bottle and taking a sip before passing it over. “Passing fine supper, your madge.”

She picked that up from Dwalin, he’d lay his beard on it. Privately swearing to give his friend a good drubbing at the first opportunity, he says, "Aye, if you like rabbit food.”

“Well, your poor taste is my good fortune, I suppose.” She scrunches her nose a few times in a distinctly rabbit-like manner, pulling a chuckle from his throat. “Or maybe I was just hungry. Breakfast was very fine, but it was quite a while ago.”

“You missed _lunch?_ ” He stops with the bottle halfway to his mouth to gape at her, only somewhat in jest. “Are you feeling feverish? Do I need to warn Oin to prepare his poultices?”

“Hah, hah. If you must know, I simply lost track of time. It happens!” she says, defensively, when he merely peers at her from beneath his brows. “I used to do it often enough at home, if I got caught up with weeding or distracted by a particularly fine book. I have the loveliest armchair, and in the summer I push it right up to the window and listen to the bees buzzing about my garden while I read.”

There’s a peculiar sort of longing in her voice, and Thorin clears his throat and takes a swig of wine. “And is that what you were doing today? Reading some elvish tome?”

“Not quite, as I believe you saw well enough,” she says, with a smile. “I was just… wandering, I suppose.”

He makes a rude noise at the back of his throat. “It can’t have been as interesting as all that.”

“You’d be surprised.” That wistful, wondering look lingers, then she shakes it away and swipes the bottle from his hands with a smile, looking far more like her usual self. “I saw all _sorts_ of interesting sights, really. For example, those water fountains of theirs—lovely, aren’t they?”

If she expects him to cringe and blush in prudish shame, she’s going to be sorely disappointed. “Distracted, were you?”

“Well, it was certainly quite the view.” She toys with the neck of the bottle, her smile turning coy. “Are all dwarves so very… well-pelted?”

He suppresses the urge to rub at his chest beneath his shirt and scowls at her. “I suppose your hobbit men are as beardless as the women, then?”

“Oh, most certainly. Aside from our heads, hobbits only grow hair in three places: on our feet, beneath our arms, and betwixt our legs. Same for lads and lasses alike.”

Well that was… more than he strictly needed to know. _You asked, lad,_ he tells himself, and folds his hands in his lap so he can't give in the urge to rub awkwardly at his chin. “How do you tell yourselves apart, then?”

“The same way dwarves do, I imagine, unless rumors are true and you _do_ just hew your children from solid stone,” she laughs. “We’re not shaped the same, any more than lads and lasses anywhere. Or are things so very different for your kind?”

“No, it’s true enough.” He catches himself lingering on the spur of her collarbone where her makeshift gown slips, and drags his gaze askance. “We do _not_ grow out of rock, by the way. Our women are less common than men, however, and as they make up the majority of our craftsman they rarely have cause to venture far from our strongholds.”

“Fascinating,” she drawls, though he'd judge it nothing more than reflexive sarcasm. “I feel as if I should be taking notes.”

“I’d dread to read _that_ essay,” he sighs. “Maker knows there’s enough misinformation about our kind circulating as it is.”

“You wound me, Thorin Oakenshield,” she says with mock affront, her hand pressed to her chest. “I would never misinform! There’ll be naught from my pen but the most reliable of facts, I’ll have you know. Collected patiently, over many months of study…”

She trails off, and though there is still a smile on her face, it’s absent now, her eyes focused on distantly on something he can’t see. Something like worry catches in the back of his throat at the sight of it—though he couldn’t say what, exactly, he’s worried about.

“What is it?” he asks roughly. “You look…”

“Hmm?”

“Far away,” he substitutes hastily, because what she looks is _sad._ “Did I say aught amiss?”

“Hundreds of things,” she assures him, looking somewhat more her usual self, “truly, I’ve lost count, but tonight, no.” She shrugs. “I was just thinking."

He doesn't trust _that_ anymore than the wistful look. "About what?" 

She toys with the hem of her dress and avoids his gaze, which is more suspicious yet, but still he's not prepared when she looks at the ceiling and says, "Lord Elrond offered me a place to stay, this afternoon.”

Thorin comes growling to attention. “He _dares-_ ”

“Peace, your madge.” She waves him back. “I didn’t take him up on it.”

“Still.” Anger is a roil in his ribcage, his earlier fury at Elrond’s comments melting into outrage at the lord’s presumption. Bree is a _member of their company,_ and as such should be above such petty interferences. “He has no right! Does he think to delay my quest by stealing away our burglar?”

“Not everything is about you, you know.” He glares at her, and she sighs, looking away. “It was kindly meant, I think, and no intended slight to your princely pride. It's not as if he's foolish enough to believe Gandalf's folderol about my 'map collection,' after all, and who would think I would make any kind of burglar? It doesn't take a keen eye to notice that someone like me has little place among a company of dwarves."

Thorin is well acquainted with the feeling of shame. Shame is the twisting soreness beneath the breastbone when he’s forced to beg for work and scraps from the lowliest peasant, quick to make a coin on your effort and quicker still to run you out when the work is done. Shame is the ache in his throat when he thinks of his grandfather, the feverish burn of mindless greed on that once-proud face and the sightless cloud of empty eyes as his head was held high by the Pale Orc. Shame is the grind of clenched teeth and aching jaw when he looks around the lord’s table at the High Sun Feast and knows that it’s pity that permits him the seat, a lord without a hall. Shame is the sickness that burns low in his belly at the knowledge that however far they’ve come, however much they’ve built, he will never be a king to his people while the dragon sleeps in the halls of his fathers.

And shame is this, too: the melancholy turn to a usually merry smile, and the matter-of-fact way she says it, as if she's so used to the idea that the thought of it no longer raises even a hint of her formidable ire. And worst yet is the sure and certain knowledge that there's nothing he can say in his own defense. He _doesn’t_ think that she belongs on this quest. She’s demonstrated some unexpected moments of bravery, these past few days, and he can’t deny her cleverness, but she’s far more vulnerable than the least of his kind, and even through her jokes he can see her homesickness. And now the elves had made her an offer of welcome, because even on such short acquaintance they can see what Thorin’s known from the start: that even their burglar’s fine spirit doesn’t burn bright enough to keep her with them, and that it’s only a matter of time before she slips away.

"We all like you well enough," he manages, only a little belatedly, his voice gruff with the burn of guilt. To his mortification, he can feel a flush burning on his cheeks, and can only pray that she doesn't take note of it. "Even if you _are_ far more trouble than you're worth."

She gives a soft chuff of laughter, and shakes her head—but the pensive look fades, and her smile, when she gives him a chiding sideways look, is almost back to normal. “You like shouting at me, you mean.”

Thorin glares back at her, feeling the shaky ground steady into more familiar road beneath his feet. “As if you don’t give as good as you get, burglar,” he grumbles. “You wouldn’t leave us for these sylvan halls—you’d miss the arguments.”

He manages, if barely, to keep from turning it into a question, but she merely rolls her eyes and doesn't contest the point. _Not today,_ he tells himself. _Not just yet._

“It's just as well, since that’s all I ever get out of you. Honestly, Thorin. Sometimes you remind me of a lad I knew, always following me about to trip me, or splash mud on my dress, or dip my pigtails in ink. You don’t know how to do aught else but bicker.”

“I don’t _bicker,_ ” he says, instead of what he wants to say, which is that he damn well knows how to do other things, too, and if she continues to tease him so he’d be happy to demonstrate. _If her jabs were less well-aimed_ , he reminds himself, _they wouldn’t be quite so frustrating_. “I merely point out how incredibly wrong you are.”

“Wrong, is that it? Look, Thorin, it’s not my fault you’ve got rocks where other people keep their earth-sense,” she laughs. “Finding east is the first thing they teach young faunts still on the leading string. You just _look up._ ”

“What need have dwarves for earth-sense when they’re born to stone?” he says. “I can navigate a mine shaft blindfolded a mile deep. I doubt your people could say the same.”

“At least my people also know which mushrooms are poisonous!” she retorts, setting the wine bottle aside so she can gesture with more vigor. “And I know for a fact that mushrooms grow on mountains too, so you have no excuse.”

“Cooking was never my job,” he growls. “Just because I had more important things to do than worry about spices and things-” 

“You don’t seem to mind my unimportant cooking on the road,” she points out.

“I’m just too polite to complain.”

“Too busy stuffing your face, you mean. Don’t think it’s escaped my notice that Bombur and I are the only ones who end up with cooking duty anymore. The rest of you are hopeless.”

“We have other skills.”

“I’m sure you do.” She gives him a little sideways smile, her cheeks flushed with wine or amusement or both. “Perhaps you can arrange a demonstration of those sometime, so I can judge for myself.”

It almost sounds like- But no. He’s just distracted, is all, caught unawares by her all-too-accurate comparison to some starry-eyed childhood tormentor. Hearing what he wants to hear, as she’s forever accusing him of doing. “My swordwork,” he growls, “is unmatched.”

“Oh, I’m sure your swordwork is _excellent,_ ” she says, her voice deepened to nearly a purr—and then, when he turns to look at her in outrage, the infernal creature _winks_ at him.

It’s too much. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he says stiffly—painfully aware of the betraying flatness in his voice, the way his shoulders come up to hunch defensively around his ears. She might tease him unmercifully, their burglar, but this sort of thing is beneath her. "Give me that wine bottle, you've had it far long enough-" 

Her hand on his knee stops him cold, and he follows the line of her arm all the way up to her shoulder, and then to her face, pink-cheeked but hopeful. “Do you not, Thorin?” she says, a little wistful. “Truly?”

She can't mean it how she sounds. She _can't._ "Well, I certainly don't think-"

She cuts him off with a kiss.

It’s fairly chaste, as kisses go; for all her recklessness she’s careful with the deed itself, easing her lips against his like he’s a lad needing to be coaxed. Her lips are a little chapped from their travels, and she has a particularly lush curve to the lower, almost exactly where she chews on it when she’s biting back some stinging retort. He’s stared at that mouth more times than he will ever admit to _himself_ , much less anyone else, and she smells like honeysuckle and it's been, it's been a long time, since there's been anyone-

She pulls away, not far, just enough to catch a sipping breath between them, her brow pressed to his. “Your beard,” she breathes, and she’s too close to see but he think he can hear a smile in her voice. “That’s a fun new thing.”

He growls, low in his throat, and drags her open mouth back down to his.

The next few minutes are something of a blur: at some point she starts sucking on his tongue, and at another he gets his hands into her hair, and somewhere along the line she either climbs into his lap or he lifts her there, he's not entirely sure. He makes the happy discovery that her ridiculous ears are actually quite sensitive for all their size and settles in to take full advantage of the fact, and then _she_ discovers how very much he enjoys the sting of teeth at his throat and pulls his head back to return the favor, and after that it's mostly a jumble of mouths and hands and hot, serrated breaths between them, like two lads after their first battle, fumbling and desperate to rut.

He's no boy to lose himself to the demands of his prick, however, and eventually the elaborate carven edge of the sofa-seat starts to dig into his spine, and he comereturns, more or less, to his senses. Bree is straddling his thighs with an easy balance that speaks well to her practice in the saddle these last weeks, and determinedly suckling a bruise onto his collarbone that will be dark as blackcurrant wine, from the feel of things. One hand is lashed vice-tight around her hips, as if she might change her mind and try to get away, and the other is wrapped in the long glorious spill of her hair, just below her nape.

"This is probably-" He grunts in pleasure as her sharp little teeth scrape along the mark she's so carefully laved into his skin. "Probably a bad idea."

She laps the point of her tongue smugly over the bruise, and laughs as he tightens his fist in her hair. "Since when has that ever stopped you?"

"You know," he grumbles, unable to some any true annoyance but still feeling as if he should make the effort, "I don't even think I like you."

She laughs again, this time into the crook of his neck. "And what's that got to do with anything? I'm talking about a bit of feel-good, a warm night before going into some very cold mountains." She leans back at his urging tug, shaking his hand free of her hair and grinning down at him as she braces her small hands against his chest. "Hobbits like our pleasures."

"I might have guessed as much." He forces the hand on her hip to uncurl before he leaves bruises of his own, and rubs one thumb along the jut of her hipbone through the thin silk of her dress, repentant. "I'm just surprised you chose me to exercise them."

She raises one imperious eyebrow and sweeps her gaze down the length of him, or at least to his hips. "Oh, I don't know, maybe something about a tall, strong, handsome man stirs my interest, call me odd," she says, dry as dust. "Honestly, Thorin, false modesty doesn't suit you. I'd have invited you to bed that first night, had you not seemed so disagreeably set on your quest." She chuckles, then leans back to her work, this time on the side of his neck.

He leans back and lets her, his head a-whirl. For every time he watched her tilt her head back to glare at him and let his gaze follow the bare line of her throat, every time she bent over the cook-pot and he thought about running his hand down the tidy line of her spine, every time he fantasized about fisting his hand in her golden curls and kissing her silent—for all of that, he never thought his laddish fascination would be _returned._ He's dallied often enough in the towns of Men to know that the sturdy angles and tough hide of dwarves are strange indeed even to lads and lasses accustomed to beards in their menfolk; surely halflings, with their smooth chins and soft bellies and softer hands, would find him stranger still.

And yet. _I'd have invited you to bed that first night,_ she said, and he'd accuse her of false flattery except that he's never known Bree to lie to him, not even for the sake of her fussy Shire manners. And why would she bother to flatter? She already has him right where she wants him, the tormenting she-devil, between her thighs and spread out beneath her, hers to handle as she pleases.

And _handle_ him she does, running her soft hands along his chest, his ribs, his belly, humming happily when he lies back and leaves her to her work. After a minute she starts to work his shirt free of his trousers, rubbing the pads of her fingers over the cut of muscle at his hips. He lifts his arms to allow her to pull it off over his head, and as soon as she tosses it to the side her hands are back on his chest, running clever fingers through the dense thatch of hair and scratching thoughtfully at the flushed skin beneath.

He strokes his hands up her thighs and has to smile at the look of determined curiosity on her face. "Does it meet your expectations, m'lady burglar?"

"It's much softer than it looks," she says, thoughtfully. Her seeking fingers work their way down to his belly, then back up to his chest, where she flicks playfully at his nipple with the outer edge of one nail. He sucks in a startled breath through his teeth, feeling the shock of it run down his spine straight to his bollocks, and she grins down at him, smugly pleased. "These seem to be about the same, though."

_Enough of that,_ he thinks, and tugs her hands free, spurred by the self-satisfied light dancing in her eyes. "Your turn," he orders, and with her help he works her dress up over her head, leaving her clad in only her simple cotton breast band and underthings. He strokes his hands—his big, rough hands, he can't help but note, though it's not fear that leads her to shiver at the touch—down her back, her sides, and up her soft belly. Another bout of fumbling (must everything about hobbits be so confoundedly _complicated_ ) gets the band unfastened and cast aside, and then he has the generous fullness of her breasts in his hands, her large pink nipples rolling between his fingers. She makes the most glorious noises when he does it, hitching little gasps and then a single, full-throated moan, and he can't resist the temptation to put his mouth to work, which only makes her moan all the louder.

She lets him work her for a while longer, frotting against him with increasing desperation until he can smell the musky dampness of her, and then she fists her hand in the hair at his nape and _yanks_ his mouth up to hers, sucking on his tongue as fervently as she might another appendage. His prick is a single solid line of need, grinding up against her as fervently as he can while still trapped in his trousers, and then he feels her hand tighten nearly to pain in his hair as her voice breaks on a moan, and it's as if some invisible barrier shatters between them. She scrabbles at the catches on his trousers while he tries to yank free her underthings without actually moving her from his lap, and then she gets his pants open and once her hand is around his cock he cares considerably less about removing anything, and just yanks her smalls aside to slide a finger roughly inside of her.

It's a poor excuse for foreplay, and a dwarrow-dam would clout him over the head for the presumption, but she just clutches at his hair with her free hand, her other going shocked and still around his prick as she cries out. She's wet and slick already, and loose enough that one finger slides in easily enough, so he sets about working a second in beside it, stretching her carefully as he goes. She squirms desperately in his lap, rutting against his hand as her low, breathy moans escalate in volume, clenching weakly at his prick with her hot, smooth palm until he can think of nothing but getting inside of her. He pulls his fingers free with an oath and tugs her wordlessly up by the hips, and she catches his meaning well enough, grinning fiercely as any axe-maid as she shifts to spear herself onto him.

She's tight, so incredibly tight around him even after his efforts, for surely her slight body isn't made to fit against the stout form of a dwarf. He clenches his fingers on her hips and grinds his teeth together, determined to go slow, to allow her to ease herself around his throbbing prick. But then she moans, sharp and sudden, her mouth bowed to a single round 'o' of surprise, and he looks up into her gray eyes and finds only a hazy sort of pleasure, a hectic flush on her cheeks and her sunrise hair streaming free over her naked shoulders, and he groans aloud and ruts up into her like a beast, seating himself fully within her in one short, sharp thrust.

He freezes, contrition fighting pleasure for space in his belly, but she just moans again and presses her palms flat against his chest and starts to leverage herself up and down, slow at first and then faster as her body starts to adjust to the intrusion. Her fingers curl into claws in his chest hair as she fucks herself onto his cock like a woman on a mission, and he can do nothing but hold onto her and allow himself to be taken. Her hair falls in a curtain around them, surrounding him in the salty-sweet scent of her, and between that and the fierce way she's riding him, taking her pleasure with no thought for his own, he soon finds himself spilling into her with a shout like some feckless lad, far too soon and with no warning whatsoever.

She goes still over him as he pulses inside of her, but he can feel her clenching down, milking him through the last rippling shocks of it. Then she leans back, seating herself deeper on his still-hard cock, forcing a low moan out from behind clenched teeth.

"Good lord, you are magnificent," she pants, her own voice shredded and hoarse from her cries, and gives him a dazzling smile. "I couldn't even imagine-"

That she should pay him compliments after such a humiliating display drives him nearly to madness, and he places one hand on her shoulder, grinding her down harder against him, while he reaches down betwixt their bodies with the other. Nothing has led him to believe that hobbits would be formed differently in this sense, and sure enough, when his thumb rubs against the top of her slit, her eyes fall closed and a moan rattles out of her throat.

He won't be able to keep this up forever, as even such a stimulating sight won't keep his prick stiff but so long after he's spilled his seed, and he's no lad to go again without rest. But he thinks he can hold out long enough to tip her over the edge, as she doesn't seem far from it, if her rapid pants are any indication. He works his fingers against her, as cleverly as he can, and when she comes she tightens near to unbearable around him, leaving him gasping and moaning almost as loudly as she.

It takes them both a moment for their pulses to slow, their panting breaths loud in the sudden quiet of the room. Her slumped body starts shaking, and he runs his hand down her back, concerned, but then whatever ails her causes her body to tighten around his softening cock, sending shivers through him till he's forced to grab her hair and tug her backwards-

-only to find her _laughing._

"If you could perhaps save your mockery until I am _inside you,_ " he hisses.

She doesn't seem to hear him. "Lord, Thorin, I have had a ride like that since- ever!" She cards her fingers absently through his chest hair, still chortling. "If I'd known _that_ awaited me, I wouldn't have passed up my chance at you that night for love or money."

It takes a moment for sense to percolate through his gathering storm cloud of rage to realize that what he saw as mockery was, in fact, delight. The most mortifyingly short fuck of his long life—though, he must admit, one of the most enjoyable—and she's near to vibrating with pleasure.

Hobbits are strange creatures, indeed, he thinks, but her mouth on his cuts off the thought before it can form into words. He strokes his shaking hand through her sweat-dampened hair and tangles his tongue with hers, and for a moment, at least, he allows everything else to float away.

His cock finally softens enough to slip free of her body, and they make simultaneous faces of annoyance at the sticky mess of seed that follows. "Bath, I think," Bree decides, and awkwardly clambers off his lap and to her feet. She staggers a little once she's upright, almost as if she's drunk, and laughs again. " _Never_ such a ride as that," she repeats, wondering, and shakes her head. "Have you a bathing-room?"

"Luckily for both our dignity, yes," Thorin tells her, and gets laboriously to his feet. He sways for a moment, learning for himself how she could feel so unsteady on her legs, and then grabs her hand and leads her into the next room.

The taps run hot without any waiting, a phenomenon that causes her to exclaim in delight and him to grumble about it being a dwarven innovation, but neither of them are inclined to waste time arguing when hot bath is at hand. He shucks his trousers at last and she peels off the underthings she's somehow still wearing and they both climb into the half-filled tub. It's overlarge for their folk, sized for gangly-limbed elves, which leaves it the perfect size for the two of them, Bree tucked between the cradle of his thighs and her head beneath his chin. For a long moment they just bask, allowing the hot water to work through their trembling muscles, but then Thorin, intent on proving he can demonstrate at least _some_ of the courtesies of bed-sport, reaches for the soap and starts to lather her hair.

Afterwards, they drain the tub and scrub themselves as dry as they can with the light, filmy elven towels and return to the front room. He grabs the half-full bottle of wine, miraculously unspilled for all their nearby cavorting, and settles in at the far end of the couch, swilling from the bottle and watching her work a comb through her curls for the second time in as many days.

After a minute, she notices the weight of his gaze on her and crosses her eyes, as if hoping to divert him into a laugh. When it doesn't work she wrinkles her nose. "It can't be as fascinating as all that."

"Dwarves arrange their hair in the company of others only very rarely," he tells her, not bothering to hide the heavy interest in his gaze. "Close kin, or battle-brothers—or lovers."

She squints at him. "So when I was combing my hair yesterday…?"

"It's a very intimate act," he says solemnly.

"And you didn't _tell_ me?"

He laughs at the outraged look on her face and catches her furry foot when she makes as if to kick him in the knee. "You've made it very clear that any implications as to your virtue should be kept to myself. It seemed the safer option."

"Confound and confusticate your _implications,_ " she grumps. "A warning would have been nice!"

"But much less entertaining." She wiggles her toes against his palm, and he tweaks the biggest one before he allows her to retrieve her foot. "Though I wouldn't recommend entertaining any of the others in such a manner. They might be much less polite than I."

"That'll be the day," she mutters. The worst of the tangles defeated, she runs her fingers through the loose, damp strands and then bundles it away at the back of her neck. "Would you like to use my comb?"

He runs a hand over the top of his head. Clean, now, and drying fast. "It'll keep."

"Until what, we're halfway into the mountains? Come here." She brandishes the comb, much as another might wave a knife. "I'll do it for you, if you're going to be typically stubborn about it."

"Always you take liberties," he sighs, but that's not an offer any sane dwarrow will pass up, so he sets aside the bottle and turns to sprawl across the couch.

"Liberties, is it?" She arranges him with his head in her lap, a very pleasing place to be indeed, and gathers up the mass of his hair until it lies over his shoulder. "Then what's the harm in one more?"

"Don't spoil the braids," he warns, and closes his eyes.

She's quiet as she tends to him, and he's more than content to leave it be, drowsing under the pleasurable tug of the comb and the almost silent susurrus of her breathing. It seems almost comfortable, which is not generally a feeling that comes to mind when he thinks of their burglar. Even, dare he say it, peaceful.

_A fine thief indeed,_ he finds himself thinking, _to steal a moment of quiet before the wilds._

Foolish thoughts. But then, it's a night for foolishness.

Eventually she sets aside the comb, her work complete, but still her hands don't leave his hair, turning instead to idle stroking. _He's_ certainly not going to stop her. He's been travelling in one direction or another for months, with barely a stop to lay his head, and it's been quite some time longer since he's had the pleasure of kind hands and an ample lap. Longer still since he's had the pleasure of a bedmate so fine as Bree. She might irritate him almost to madness once they set to bickering, but he's far from blind to her loveliness. She must have had dozens of suitors back in her Shire.

At that thought, he opens one eye. "Please tell me you don't have someone waiting back home that I'll have to answer to."

Her stroking hand pauses, and then she grabs a bit of his forelock between her fingers and tweaks, just to the point of pain. "I should box your ears for that," she says, but she doesn't sound particularly angry, either. Perhaps she's learned not to expect better from him. "You were in my home, Thorin, did you happen to spy a husband stashed away in there?"

"I don't know what odd things you hobbits do," he grumbles defensively. She wouldn't be the first to have a dwarf as a bit of strange before returning to her promised, and she likely wouldn't be the last, but he's oddly grateful to hear it nonetheless. He knows there's plenty a dwarrow that's happy to play wherever they're invited, but he's never been one of their number. "You're the one who was saying that your people like your pleasures."

She huffs out a laugh. "And true it was, but most hobbits are a little more circumspect about the issue than I. I played my fair share in my tweens, like all my kind, but generally you're expected to pick just the one and settle down."

"And you?"

She grins at him, upside-down. "I never found one that pleased me enough to give up my peace and quiet."

"If it's peace and quiet you wanted, you're in the wrong place."

"I need no reminder on _that,_ thank you."

Her jibe sounds tart enough, but still Thorin regrets bringing it up. It’s not like he needs to give her _more_ reasons to leave. "Dwarves are different," he offers. She's endlessly curious, their burglar; this will distract her. "We have three men to every woman, more or less. Many of our kind never marry. We devote ourselves to our work, or to other men."

"Ah," Bree says. "Hmm."

He tilts his head back to look up at her. "Do hobbits not do that?"

"If they do, they usually try not to let others know of it," she says, her mouth curled in a small smile. "Though if sometimes two dear friends who yet remain unwed past their courting years choose to take a home together, well, that's just sensible, isn't it?"

He shakes his head, but he supposes he isn't tremendously surprised. "Very concerned with the appearance of things, you hobbits."

"Oh, you've no idea," she assures him. "Still, I know it's not always the same outside the Shire. I've lost my head over a lass or two in my day—though it never came to much of anything, of course, things being as they are—and it inspired a bit of reading likely not _entirely_ what our librarian might have wished. Elves seem to put little stock in it either way, save to assure that some couples still bear children, and it's quite common among Men, if my books are to be believed. They often have shield-brothers who are their partners in all things on the battlefield, in the stories. Even those who have wives at home."

"Ah, well, it's not so different for dwarves, then," Thorin says. "Only without the wives."

"And what of you, Master Oakenshield?" She tweaks his forelock again, gentler this time, teasing. "Prince of your people, with honor and wealth besides? Have _you_ a wife I should apologize to?"

"You'd have to know what the word means, first," he grumbles, but sighs. "Nay. I have a sister, and her sons will be my heirs. Dwarves love only the once, and that particular madness has never taken me in its grip."

"Ah, me neither." She sounds distant again, though not sad, only a little wistful. "I courted a bit when I was younger, but never found someone to suit. My parents had a great romance, you know, at least by Hobbiton standards; even years later, you can still hear tales of their courting in the pub on Highday."

He wraps one hand around her sturdy ankle, stroking the calloused pads of his fingers through the softer curls on her shins. "A lot to live up to."

"Indeed." She toys idly with the braid at his temple. "My mother was a great wanderer—that's how she first came to know Gandalf, in her youth—but she stilled her feet for my father's sake. She never really recovered from his death, and followed him into the grave as quickly as her own good health would allow. I never felt such a pull. So I became Eccentric instead."

"Ah, I was wondering what that-" He pauses, realizing that the only other time he's heard the word, he was eavesdropping on her private conversation. "That is, I mean-"

"It's alright, it was easy enough to figure you'd been listening in," Bree says easily enough. "You weren't terribly subtle. So Eccentricity is another thing big folk don't have? How odd. After a certain point in a young hobbit's life, if they are still unwed, it becomes clear that they are likely not to do so at all. A man is declared a Bachelor, and a woman an Old Maid—unless she has money, or her family is quite respectable, which in my case was both. Then they become Eccentric. It's understood of Eccentrics that they will always be a little odd, but we have decent standing with our neighbors, and since we have no children it's thought we'll leave our things to our favorite cousins, so our kin are eager to stay on our good side. It's not a bad life."

"And yet you were willing to leave it behind, to join a pack of uncivilized dwarves," Thorin says. "You never told us what changed your mind."

She grins down at him and runs her hand down the side of his face, scritching her trimmed nails through his short beard. "When I figure that out myself, Master Oakenshield, I'll be sure to let you know."

Thorin has something clever to say in reply to that—or will, in just a moment, if she’ll give him a bloody second—only there’s a knock at the door before he quite gets there. They both jump, and Thorin glares at the door, trying to figure out if he can ignore it safely. It’s probably just some elven servant looking to retrieve his tray, or somesuch, and he’s reluctant to leave this little bubble of comfort and easy words, because he has knows well enough what will happen when it’s broken. Which is well enough—the road's no place to be conducting an affair, even if he were fool enough to pursue one with a woman who most days seems as if she'd prefer to brain him over the head with a chamberpot—but neither is he looking to hurry things along, if he can help it.

The knock comes again, followed by a hissed, “Uncle, open up!”

Fili. Whatever mischief his nephew is brewing now, it’s almost certainly unwise to ignore it, so he sits up with a martyred sideways look at Bree. She gives him a sympathetic smile and gets up, scooping up her discarded dress and breast-band and heading for the bathing-room where she left her smalls. He allows himself a single sigh at the sight of her naked form leaving the room, then grabs his trousers and pulls them on, not bothering to finish doing up the catches before he yanks open the door.

“What?” he snaps, and then realizes that Fili isn’t alone in the hallway. Kili is at his elbow, of course, but Dwalin and Balin are behind him, and Thorin can find no evidence of either smugness or shame on any of their faces. Kili, in particular, looks unusually grim. “What is it?” he says again, softer this time. “Has something gone wrong?”

“Perhaps,” Balin answers for the group. His gaze flicks down to Thorin’s bare chest, and then back to his face. “Gandalf is in conference with Lord Elrond and two others, both newly arrived. I don’t know what trouble they pose for us, but Gandalf sent word to get out now, while they’re distracted, and wait for him in the mountains.”

_Slag it!_ He should have realized, when he overheard Gandalf and their host earlier. Elrond was too heated, and the wizard too defensive, for it to be merely talk. He should have known then, but he’d been too distracted by Elrond’s words, and too smug regarding his own plan of escape. When the entire time, Elrond has been plotting a surprise ambush of his own!

At the thought, something occurs to him. “Sent word how, exactly?” Lord Elrond has proved adept at the subtle machinations of elves; right now he would put no deception past him. “Could someone have intercepted it somehow, to prompt us into an early flight and capture?”

All of them shake their heads. “He spoke in my mind,” Kili says quietly. “It was definitely him.”

There’s a lot of things he wants to say to that, but he looks at the strained expression on his nephew’s face and they all die on his tongue. “Are you alright?”

Kili manages a small smile. “Fine, Uncle. It was just… loud.”

_Oh, that wizard and I are going to have *words,* when he catches up, and none of them will be ‘Maker bless.’_ “Alright,” he says, and squeezes Kili’s shoulder. “Get the others. It’s late enough most of the servants will be abed.”

“And what of our burglar?” Dwalin asks, turning to jerk his head at the other door. “Is she still astray?”

“I’ll deal with the halfling,” Thorin says, extremely conscious of the distance between door to bathing-room, and of the fact that she can likely hear every word. “No need for all of us to get a scolding. I’ll make sure she’s packed and meet you at the front in ten minutes.”

“Your funeral,” Dwalin grins, and heads off. Fili and Kili follow, but Balin hesitates, his bushy brows drawn low with worry.

“Lad, are you sure of this? The road east of here is extremely treacherous. Rough enough to set out at dawn, but in the middle of the night, with no sleep…”

It’s nothing that hasn’t occurred to him, and worse, besides. But-

“Have we any choice, old friend?”

Balin presses his lips together, as if to hold back a sharp remark, but after a moment he merely sighs and shakes his head. “I suppose not,” he says. “Very well, then, I’ll see it done. Try not to be too harsh on our burglar, should she bite your nose off for waking her.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he says gruffly, and shuts the door.

He leans his forehead against it, listening to the steady clop of Balin’s boots as he moves down the hallway, and just- holds, for a moment. Just breathes in, and then out again, and wishes- Oh, he wishes-

“I’d never bite your nose off,” Bree says, from behind him. He feels a small, soft hand come to rest between his shoulderblades, far more reassuring than it has any right to be. “It’d be far too much effort, for one thing, and only think of the mess! Obviously I’d need to use pruning shears.”

“I suppose I’m lucky you left them behind, then, with your handkerchiefs and whatever else it is you’re always fussing about.” He rolls his shoulders up into the press of her hand for one endless moment, and then he straightens and feels it drop away, leaving him feeling oddly chilled. “I don’t suppose you got the rest of your clothes back from the laundry?”

“Just this afternoon, in fact. The maids here can work miracles, apparently; nothing smells even the slightest bit of troll.”

It’s easier than he thought, to turn and meet her eyes; harder, to hold them instead of letting his gaze wander to the rueful upturn of her kiss-swollen mouth. He had plans for that mouth—and for the rest of her, too, before the evening fell to a close. Plans to pull her to his bed and show her what passion can be wrought at the hands of a dwarven craftsman, plans to make her sigh and beg and perhaps even tug at his hair with that thorny affection in her eyes and call him _oaf_ and _blockhead_ and _stubborn dwarf_ , and now it’s all come to naught. Now he’ll never know the taste of her sex, or the sound of his name when torn hoarsely from her bare little throat, and that seems, suddenly, a loss beyond the counting of it.

_Another cost to lay at the dragon’s door,_ he tells himself, and shores up the wavering buttresses of his resolve.

“If you plan to take Lord Elrond’s offer, Mistress Baggins,” he tells her, his voice hard as stone, “now would be the time.”

She folds her arms over her chest and gives him her usual flinty glare. “You won’t be rid of me that easily. If you wish me gone, Master Oakenshield, you’ll have to ask me yourself.”

“Come, then, if you’re coming,” he says, and pretends he can’t feel something like relief taking wing in his heart. “But you’d best dress quickly.”

“Says the man in naught but his trousers,” she says, nose in the air. “People in glass houses, laddybuck, shouldn’t be throwing stones.”

It’s been long enough, he judges, that none of the others should still linger in the hall, so he reaches behind and swings open the door with a mocking flourish. “As your ladyship commands. But you’re down to eight minutes, now—and if you think I won’t leave without you, you’re gravely mistaken.”

“Brute,” she sniffs, and slips past him through the door. He feels her fingers brush along his ribs, just a ghost of a touch before she’s gone, over to her room on quick, silent feet.

He stares after her, for just a moment, looking at the spill of her hair across her shoulders as she fusses with the lock, and then he turns with an oath and goes to fetch his gear.

###### 

The sun is coming up as they approach the crest of the eastern ridge, lighting their way just enough that the rough-hewn stone of the steps is a little less treacherous under their boots. It’s to be a fine summer morning, Thorin can tell; the breeze that ruffles his hair is warm and sweet, and smells faintly of honeysuckle and damp stone. It’s a good day for travelling, and even with hours of climbing behind them and hours yet of walking ahead, everyone is bright-eyed and smiling as they make their breathless way up the rock.

Well. Almost everyone. Their burglar seems to be dragging her heels—but that could just be the length of the climb. Good with trees, hobbits may be, but steep paths are apparently something else altogether.

He waits at the top of the path to count his company as they clamber up the last rock, checking packs and gear with a practiced eye to make sure nothing is left behind. "Be on your guard," he tells them, as Bofur and Bifur make their way past him. "We're about to step over the edge of the Wild. Balin?”

“Aye,” his old friend sighs, and slips into the lead. “This way, lads. I know of a campsite we can make by nightfall, if we hurry.”

Thorin looks back to find Bree paused, the others nudging past her without so much as a sideways glance. She’s looking backwards, out over the valley, and the look on her face-

“Mistress Baggins,” he calls. “I suggest you keep up.”

She turns back, slower than he’d like, but the frown she sends him is as fierce as any usually aimed his way. “See to your own affairs, Master Oakenshield, and I’ll see to mine.”

“A fine thought, halfling.” He nods to little Ori as he passes, then braces himself on his axe-haft and thrusts his hand down for her to grab. She gives him a small grumbling sort of look, but puts hers into it without hesitation, and allows him to haul her up the too-tall side of the rock. “But I’ll believe it when I see it.”

She squeezes his palm in hers, for just a moment, then clears her throat and steps away, not quite meeting his gaze. "Believe that I'll box your ears if you start trying to haul me about like a sack of luggage," she retorts, and if her tone isn't quite as sharp as one might expect, well, he's sure they'll be back to normal once they've been on the road a while.

“You’re welcome,” he growls, and nudges her aside. “Ungrateful halfling.”

“Arrogant dwarf,” she mutters, and makes as if to brush past him with a huff, her pack jouncing awkwardly on her shoulders as she goes.

On a whim, he grabs it by the laces and tugs her to a stop, smiling to himself at the way she glares daggers at him for the impertinence. "I'd hate to have you lose it down a mountainside," he tells her solemnly, lifting the pack to the correct position on her shoulders and snugging up the straps. “Only think of all the complaining I’d be forced to endure."

She cranes her head about, trying to see what he's doing. “Not nearly as much I'd have to listen to from your own honored self, when you realized my spices went with it.”

He can feel the end of her braid brushing against his wrist from her wriggling, and it takes everything he has not to turn his hand and tug, just once. Just because he can.

_You're done,_ he reminds himself. _So be done._

“There,” he says, and knots the end of the straps so they won't slip. “I suppose you’re acceptable.”

Her eyes, when she looks back up at him, are warm with the same relief and regret that he can feel churning in his belly. Regret, to have had to having of her so very briefly, when there's so many things he's yet dreamed of doing. But relief, too—to have it so thoroughly finished, before things could get too tangled between them.

Not everything has the luxury of such a clean ending.

"Well," she allows, her bare little chin tipping back with a fine approximation of her usual combativeness, "if your madge _supposes_ , who could ask for more?" And then she grasps her little walking-stick in one hand, and hitches her oversized sword-belt in the other, and stomps off after the others.

He stares after her for one long moment, wishing-

And then sighs. And follows.

**Author's Note:**

> Bofur's song at supper is the same one he sings in the Extended edition (if you haven't seen it, it's [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k7o8UIGfZI) on youtube), but it's also [The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late](http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Moon_Stayed_Up_Too_Late), written by none other than Bilbo Baggins in book canon. I think in the movie we're supposed to think that it's a dwarven song, given how all of the others manage to sing along, but I choose to believe that they're merely very good at memorizing things, which is why they're able to sing the whole thing back after hearing it only once or twice from Bree. Mostly because it makes that scene way funnier. (Although I'm a little sad that my scene changes meant that I couldn't keep in Thorin leaving the table rudely to walk _ten feet away_ and pull out a flask, because honestly, _Thorin_.)
> 
> A note on ages and timelines: in the book, Thorin is I believe the oldest of the dwarves, and lost Erebor to Smaug when he was, like, twenty. Since Balin looked well-aged at that time _and_ lives through the quest to become Lord of Moria, that obviously does not work quite so well. I decided, semi-arbitrarily, that Thorin is currently 170-ish, and fled Erebor when he was 90-ish, meaning he's currently comfortably middle-aged, for a dwarf, and was not far past his second majority when they were exiled. LoTR wiki says that dwarves come of age at 40, fanon (or some other canon I don't know about) seems to say seventy, so I decided to split the difference and give dwarves two points of majority: physical maturity around 40 years of age, and considered a full adult at 70, which makes sense for a long-lived race. (Edit: Hah! [Dwarrow Scholar agrees with me.](https://dwarrowscholar.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/the-age-of-dwarves/)) I tend to think of hobbits much the same, in that they're likely physically adults around 20ish, but aren't considered "of age" legally until they're 33, at which point they seem to move rapidly into middle age and stay there until they're, like, eighty. Hobbits, man.
> 
> I'm [sorrelchestnut over on tumblr](sorrelchestnut.tumblr.com/), come by and say hi whenever!


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